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One morning a reader knocked on my door in Beijing, wheremy husband, Winston, was serving as American ambassador toChina. There stood a stranger asking for Bette Bao Lord. Her facewas oddly shaped, her speech most polite. I hesitated, dreadinganother avid tourist from somewhere Stateside wanting an impromptuguided tour of the embassy from the ambassador's wife.
The stranger said simply, "I've come seven thousand miles justto see her." That did it. I invited her to tea.
The explanation began more than a decade earlier with her surprisedivorce. Stunned by her predicament at middle age, and herchildren married, she resolved to abandon the suburbia she knewfor traveling far and wide in search of the extraordinary. Shefloated down the Amazon in a canoe and soared over the Alps in aballoon as part of a string of such feats that illuminated her bravenew life for years. Eventually she had to settle for a less strenuousexistence. On the plane to buy a house on her favorite Greek isle,she read a book she had snatched off a shelf while racing throughthe airport—Spring Moon.
My tale set in China long past elicited her own aching thoughtsof family and home. She felt a kinship with Spring Moon that transcendedculture, vicissitudes, time, and space. She had to fly backto America before adopting, once and for all, a life of exile.
Her son embraced her as she stepped unsteadily from the plane.Upon closer inspection, he asked, "Mother, how do you feel?"
"Awfully tired. The flight. It must be the flight."
"That's not it. You're going straight to the hospital."She could not change his mind; after all, he was an excellentdoctor.
The tests found cancer of the jawbone. Her son urged its immediateremoval. She balked, sincerely believing death was farpreferable to dying piece by piece.
Her son pleaded, "You've been away so long. If you won't undergosurgery for yourself, do it for your family."
Stated thus, she had no choice but to consent to the excision ofher left jaw.
Now I knew why her face was so oddly shaped, but I was nocloser to knowing why she had flown halfway across the world tosee me.
Sensing my puzzlement, she said, "Before my surgery, I vowedif I were still cancer-free five years after the operation, I'd go insearch of Bette Bao Lord to express my gratitude in person. Yousee, if I had not happened to read Spring Moon, I would surelyhave bought a house and died that year alone on that loveliest oflovely Greek isles."
Other readers have written to claim my fiction is not fiction atall but a story I absconded from life. Some went so far as to namethe true identity of one of my characters, who, more often thannot, just happened to be a distant relative of theirs. A few wereadamant in their belief that Spring Moon's life was actually that ofyours truly, despite the indisputable fact that Bette Bao Lord wasnot over a hundred years old. At first I didn't know whether tolaugh or cry. Today, I luxuriate in the delicious notion that, to thesereaders, my heroine is real.
Of course, actual events do trigger twists and turns in historicalnovels. Mine were no exception. When I was just learning to speakEnglish at P.S. 8 in Brooklyn, my parents used to take me alongwhenever they went to play mahjong with friends. I especially enjoyedgoing to "Grand Uncle" Hu's. He was the picture of rectitudein his dress and demeanor. In contrast, his small abode wasstacked helter-skelter floor to ceiling with books, minus the convenienceof shelves but not without order ...
Excerpted from Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
