About the Book In 1913 Vincent Gowen, fresh from university, left Seattle in search of adventure across the Pacific. In 1945, now priest, teacher, husband, father, and published novelist, he returned. Between those years he experienced China - the China of warlords, gunboats and treaty ports on the Yangtze - becoming fluent in Chinese and absorbing its culture. He spent his next 15 years among the Igorot people of the rice-terraced mountains...