Missions to China’s Heartland: The Letters of Hazel Todd of the China Inland Mission, 1920-1941

In 1920, twenty-seven-year-old Hazel joined the China Inland Mission and for most of the next two decades dedicated her life to the rigorous evangelical project conceived of by her sponsoring agency. At the time of her arrival, China was a nation in search of itself (the last Chinese dynasty was overthrown less than a decade before), a brutal process that inevitably defined her own life and missionary career. During her tenure there Hazel Todd epidemic warlordism, the rise of militant Nationalist and Communist political movements, and in 1937 the outbreak of full-fledged war between China and Japan.