Review Excerpt:

Yang recounts the trek her father made down the length of China to escape civil war and hunger as Mao Zedong Communist battled Chiang Kaishek's Nationalist for supremacy.  Baba, then a 17-year-old Manchurian, abandoned his studies and what was left of his family to cast his lot with thousands of refugees seeking safely as the fighting moved south.  His comfortable childhood and the Chinese legends and lore he learned are thus interwoven with his adventures on the road.  The young man was the witness to massive destruction and untold desperation as he made his way ultimately to Taiwan.  The chapter "Unity is Strength," is one of the most moving chronicles a massacre of refugee Manchurian students in Peiping who were cut down as they  peacefully departed a protest.  The author has again enhanced the work with her paintings, which give a vivid visual rendering of this fascinating story of survival and tenacity.