Long Way Home: Journeys of a Chinese Montanan

In 1936, seven-year-old Flora Wong, her parents, and her seven siblings left their home in Boston and set out across the Pacific Ocean on a twenty-one-day voyage to return to their parents’ home village in rural southern China. Flora’s father and mother sought a new, quiet life for their young family in their native land. But this was a different China, and Flora’s family would not find the peace they sought. China’s Communist Party had begun its rise toward revolution. And in 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China. Within a few years of her arrival, full-scale world war engulfed Flora’s new home.

Amid the turmoil, Flora and her family managed to build a modest life in their small village. In time, this young girl whose only home had been Boston, learned to tend the rice and vegetables, draw water from the town well, sew simple clothes and trap frogs and beetles. Her education ended in the second grade.

At eighteen, Flora was told she was engaged to be married. Working