Letters from China (Abridged, Annotated)

When Sarah Pike Conger and her husband, Ambassador Edwin H. Conger (Civil War Major), left Brazil to take a new post in China, she could not have been more excited. But within months of their arrival, the violent Boxer Rebellion broke out.

In letters to family and friends, Sarah Conger details her fascination with China and the Chinese and the desperate anxiety of the 55-day siege of the foreign legations during her husband's tenure. Though death and destruction were part of their early expe...