A two-year-old biracial American girl brought to China on the eve of the Communist takeover endures societal discrimination and maternal betrayal as she struggles over 30 years to maintain her identity as an American and to return to the United States. Among the first wave of educated youth sent from the cities to the countryside two years before the Cultural Revolution, she spends 9 years in Xinjiang, China's rugged far west. There, as part of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, she travels through the Taklamakan Desert on an unusual mission and faces the Soviet army and near-starvation while forging friendships with the Uyghur inhabitants. Returning to Beijing, she manages to contact the U.S. Liaison Office there to establish her American citizenship in the face of strong opposition from the Chinese government and in 1978 becomes the first American involuntarily held in China to return to the United States since the Korean War. Back in the United States and tasting freedom at last thanks to her resourcefulness and the work of U.S. Department of State officials, she is determined to fit in despite the different culture and the challenges of a new language she was not allowed to learn in China. Her knowledge of Communist China, rare in the United States at that time, makes her a sought-after resource by a number of government offices and private businesses. She marries an American diplomat and travels to Taiwan where she looks to the future with the determination and optimism that have taken her so far.