"Nancy Nianci is a fast-moving novel of war, complex love, fractured family, rebellion against tradition-and choices that cannot be undone. China is under ferocious attack by Japan, and for Nianci Zhou, a college student in Peking who has demonstrated against Japan, danger increases by the day. When she falls for a young American, bitter race issues emerge. Breaking from family, Nianci casts her lot with America. She chooses freedom, or so she thinks. But then she finds herself trapped, completely cut off from her family by the cataclysmic rupture between China and America in 1949. What does it mean to be an American in this time?"-- From back cover.