277 pages, maps. The books suffers from mild, intermittent foxing, else clean, unmarked and solid, through obviously second hand. "The time is 1944. The setting: East China in flames. The Characters: a New England major with his first command - a tough and surly American demolition unit isolated in the great China retreat of that turblent year; Su-Piao, a strong and beautiful Chinese women educated in America, who must join them over his protest; and Kwan, a frosty Chinese colonel who loves his country but must help ravage it. The story of their adventures in one violent week on the only road into the mountains marks Theodore White's emergency as a major novelist."