This book is important due to the historical insights of Der Ling rather than her literary skill. Her life and works underscore a shrewd ability to adapt and make the most out of her various experiences.

More often than not, though, no further mention was made about the fate of the prisoners. I wondered to myself what happened to these people? After months of digging, I learned the ugly truth, which is also addressed in this book.

A common thread that weaves the stories of all the captives together is race—one racial group attacking another. Many innocent people were simply trying to live their ordinary lives when another group decided it was justifiable to use violence to rob, beat, murder, kidnap, sometimes mutilate, and enslave others and their loved ones.

Armed with her title as princess, the married name of Mrs. Thaddeus White, and the United States as a new frontier to conquer, Der Ling won many admirers.

While browsing through the Seattle Art Museum in 1945, a scholar discovered a 5-inch jade seal, missing from China since the Boxer Rebellion, as a priceless Imperial seal. “My spectacles fell off my nose and I started to yell,” said Hugh Alexander Matier, 62-year-old scholar and traveler.

It was breathtaking. It felt like being inside the beating heart of that pulsating, exotic nation.

Not agreeing with something that happened in history or with another person’s traditions doesn’t provide license to eradicate or vilify entire aspects of the past.

In this eyewitness story, we meet Tzu-hsi in the twilight of her reign. Advanced in age, the Empress on the Dragon Throne is no longer the young beauty whose skill at seduction and aptitude for court intrigue saw her rise from a lowly Imperial concubine to the second most powerful place under the Hsien-feng Emperor.

Despite it all, there were heroes who rose above their circumstances. Those who reached out to people of another race with compassion and even love.