Book Reviews

What was it like to grow up in China during the Japanese occupation the early years of the PRC? China Cry answers this question. It was not an easy time. Sung Neng Yee was a spoiled child, but her family is forced to flee Shanghai and she grows up learning to be helpful.

After the war is won and the communists have taken over she is at first happy and believes it will be a good change. Soon, however her family learns the difficulties of having been wealthy. She becomes a law teacher for the state and her husband becomes a judge, but the his history of wealth also catches up with them and soon they are looking for cause to interrogate Neng Yee. She had attended Christian schools and she found that although her logical mind told her to say "No," she could not do it. When asked if she were a Christian, she said "Yes!" It was a difficult time and place to be Christian, made worse by the fact that she had not declared her Christianity at the start of the PRC because at the time she had thought it a passing phase of her childhood.

A difficult life gets even more difficult, but God, who had sent an angel to help her as a child, was there for her. Through the difficulties she learns to trust completely in Him. Several times when to anyone else, and occasionally to Neng Yee herself, it seems that God has abandoned her, but those times were just preludes to some breathtaking miracles.

Eventually Neng Yee comes to the United States adopting the name of Nora Lam (Lam is her husband's family name). Up to this point the book was very engrossing, but it becomes somewhat disappointing. From an intensely personal autobiography, we are distanced form Nora. It's as if with the name change the point of the book is no longer biography, but evangelism. I have nothing against evangelism as long as it isn't pushed on unwilling listeners, but changing from the intimate details of life to the grand sweep of her evangelical work is a let down. We got to know Lam Neng Yee, but we don't really get to know Nora Lam. Instead we learn about Nora Lam Ministries.

I was also disappointed to learn that Nora Lam Ministries has a very poor rating at Charity Navigator. I would not recommend sending them a donation until they improve financial efficiency, although I think the cause is essentially good. However, the book is still good reading for the first three fourths and valuable as record of the history of China during WW II and a few years following, and of the power and faithfulness of God.