At the heart of this extraordinary novel of the brutal invasion and occupation of Nanjing by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1937 stands a most unlikely figure: an American missionary named Minnie Vautrin, who had first come to China in the 1920s to teach at Jinling Girls College in Nanjing. Now dean of the college, on the eve of the Japanese invasion, Minnie, along with a small group of foreigners, has decided to remain behind-convinced that her status as an American citizen will help her safeguard the interests of the school as well as the welfare of the loyal Chinese who have dedicated their lives to the school. With the onset of the invasion Minnie oversees the use of the school as a refugee camp and will provide shelter, food, medical attention, and a home to 10,000 woman and children who have no means of support.

Using Vautrin's diaries and the records of other foreigners who witnessed the Japanese occupation, Ha Jin creates the ordeals, pressures, terror, and extreme suffering that Minnie would witness and be forced to encounter each day-and how, with limited means, resources, or suasion she tried to thwart the rampant and random acts of violence and cruelty the Japanese soldiers had license to commit. And when a semblance of ordinary life, of civility and decorum is slowly established, Minnie finds herself caught by the envy and ambition that drives the school's founder, unhappy with the condition of her beloved school, as well as a target of the propaganda attacks fomented by Japanese suspicious of foreigners sympathetic to the Chinese. Vautin becomes increasingly haunted by the fates of those she failed to protect. This is an indelible portrait of a woman unable, in the end, to protect herself against the maelstrom of history.