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A Call to China Kindle Edition
Victoria doesn’t know she’s lost....
A child of American missionaries disappears at a Beijing festival in 1940 and is never seen again. Although devastated, the parents continue their dedicated missionary work in China. After the birth of a second child, Japanese occupiers force the family into a detention camp.
Olivia embarks on a quest to find her sister . . .
Years later, the story continues as two sisters, raised in two different cultures, begin a search for identity and family. Set against the background of revolutionary change in 20th century China and America, China-born and American-raised Olivia hears her “call to China” and embarks on her own mission through the exotic country to find the sister she never knew.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherIngramElliott
- Publication dateAugust 1, 2017
- File size974 KB
Editorial Reviews
Review
A 2018 Benjamin Franklin Award Winner
"An engrossing fictional exploration of family, culture, and what it means to belong in both China and America." -Kirkus Reviews
I highly recommend this remarkable work of imagination, empathy and storytelling to anyone who wants a fast-paced plot and deep, insightful background that teaches us much about China's spiritual life. Meyer convincingly creates multiple worlds--of pre-war China, missionaries, Japanese detention camps, postwar America, and reform-era China--that are rich and imaginative. Built around two strong women, the novel immerses us in Chinese and Christian religious communities, showcasing the author's deep knowledge of China, religion and faith. Holding it all together is a riveting plot--a kidnapping whose effects span decades and continents. ---Ian Johnson, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer covering China for Baltimore's The Sun and The Wall Street Journal, and author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao
Jeffrey F. Meyer presents an interesting blend of West meets East, as generations of the traditional familial unit transition from tragedy to fulfillment. A study of family, coming of age and religion/spirituality, A Call to China evokes a sense of exploration fictionally reminiscent of Chang's Wild Swans.
A Call to China leads the reader into deep reflection about family, destiny and the search for an appreciation of self amid the hypocrisy and incongruity of the times. The real tragic history of 20th-century China and the Cultural Revolution is brought back to life as the Waymans attempt to find their individual sacred place, seeking immortality and wisdom in their own distinct fashion. By providing compelling characters, a driving rhythm and a rich plot, Meyer produces an intriguing tale of humanity struggling to recover its indigenous allegiance to one's own faith as each sees appropriate. "The color of the cat doesn't matter, black or white, as long as it can catch the mouse." --- Lisa Aquilina, J.D., LL.M, Publisher, Author, and Arizona Authors' Association President
In Jeffrey Meyer's debut novel, A Call To China, East meets West as two sisters who have grown up in separate cultures find their way back to each other. Bu'er, born to American parents but kidnapped and raised in rural China to be the leader of a secret sect called the FourOne Society, and Olivia, a professor raised in urban America, come to realize that beyond a vast cultural divide, the two sisters are related in more ways than one.
Temples, incense, caves, mountains, the Buddha and the Dao on one side; on the other, missionary compounds, university, divorce, death, Jesus and Socrates. Jeffrey Meyer's poetic and sharp prose explores both worlds and leaves readers with a tale that is moving and unforgettable, a tale of familial and spiritual love that transcends all cultures. ---Dr. Chris Brawley, author of Nature and the Numinous in Mythopoeic Fantasy Literature
Americans are only starting to learn about the turbulent history of China in the 20th Century. Jeff Meyer's novel artfully delves into the drama and strife of China's vast lands. He convincingly narrates a story of quest for connection, both on a grand political scale, and on a personal level of a woman's brave search for her sister kidnapped decades before. This is a journey far and beyond, but even more so, it is a journey into the heart. ---Christopher Radko, Author and Holiday Designer
Product details
- ASIN : B0741LC28K
- Publisher : IngramElliott; 1st edition (August 1, 2017)
- Publication date : August 1, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 974 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 383 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,140,870 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #707 in Historical Chinese Fiction
- #968 in Historical Asian Fiction
- #6,696 in Religious Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
I began graduate studies at University of Chicago in 1966, in theology. By the end of the first year I decided against theology and joined the field called History of Religions, studying with Mircea Eliade, Charles Long and Joseph Kitagawa. Deciding that Chinese religions was my first interest, I began taking classes in Classical Chinese, learning the language in the backwards fashion championed by H. G. Creel. I studied the first year with a disciple of his, then under Edwin Kracke for the second year. Finally, in the third year, I began to learn spoken Mandarin.
After finishing basic class work, I left for Taiwan in 1971 to study at the Stanford Center in Taipei until the end of 1972. I completed my dissertation and graduated in fall of 1973, beginning at the same time my teaching career at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
I did research in visual aspects of Buddhism, studied a sectarian group in Taiwan that practiced spirit-writing, and continued my work on Beijing as a sacred city. Already in the 80s I had the desire to work on a subject that would be of interest to ordinary Chinese people, so I changed my focus to investigating how Chinese were attempting to carry on their ancient moral tradition in public schools, first in Taiwan, then in the PRC. It worked. While left speechless by the sacred city ideas, almost everyone I talked to was eager to discuss the (Confucian) morality as it was presented in textbooks and classrooms.
In the early 90s, I was asked to be chair of the department, so I gathered a lot of research material, mostly mountain histories of Wutaishan, which had become the focus of my interest. I worked on that material as much as I could during the next three or four years, enjoying especially the numinous interventions and miraculous stories sections of the histories. In 1996 I was diagnosed with emphysema, and I realized that I would never be able to actually go to Wutaishan. That ended my interest in pursuing the research. I found I couldn’t do it as purely bookish endeavor.
I had expanded my dissertation on Beijing a few years earlier, and this work was published as Dragons of Tiananmen by U. South Carolina Press in 1991. A few years later I chanced to meet Jane Freundel Levey in Washington, the editor of Washington History Journal. She had spent some years in China, and we talked about the similarities between the two capitals, Washington and Beijing. She wanted a comparative article on the subject, which I wrote, and this work led me eventually to publish, in 2001, Myths in Stone, a study of the symbolism of architecture and planning of our capital.
I retired from teaching in 2008, having had, in retrospect, a rather scattershot career in all sorts of subjects (as the summary above reveals). I thought about continuing in one or another of those fields, but eventually realized that, because of the limitations in the academic study of religions, I felt led to try fiction instead. I have loved every minute of it, feeling engaged in a way that I had not felt before, a work that engaged my heart as well as my mind. The result is this novel, A Call to China.
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I read A Call to China on my Kindle, but I intend to buy the book. It will be a keeper.