Anna’s father, Joseph, is not an American who won’t come home, he is an American born in China to missionary parents and at home there. Shanghai is his home and he loves it. His wife, Eve, is an American who wants to go home, and Anna is a child with one foot in each culture.

It is obvious to everyone that there is trouble on the horizon by 1941, but when Eve decides it is time to leave China, Joseph refuses to go with her. Thus, he is still present in Shanghai when the Japanese occupy the city and he begins a life that is separate from (and no doubt unimaginable for) his family.

The story is told from Anna’s view point and is made even more poignant because it rings so true in the way it affects her life and her own choices and decisions. It is a story about anger, about misunderstanding, about longing and about forgiveness. My eyes were not dry by the end of the novel, and I felt as if I could understand Anna’s enigmatic father, her mother who loved him despite his seeming faults, and Anna herself, who wanted the loves and attentions of a man whose choices only seemed to make for loneliness and separation.

My thanks to my good friend, Elyse, who told me many months ago that I should read this book. I bought it back then but let it languish on my Kindle for all this time. I am happy to have gotten to it at last.
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The narrator of The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell is six years old in 1937 when the book begins. Anna and her parents live in Shanghai. Her father is wealthy but grew up as the son of American missionaries in China. We don't know exactly how her father earns enough to support the lavish lifestyle they lead, he just describes himself as "a businessman".

Anna's father loves China and wants her to love it too. He teaches her Mandarin words and walks with her through Shanghai on Saturday mornings teaching her street and building names. When the Japanese occupy Shanghai, Anna and her mother leave China, the only home Anna knows, to return to her mother's home in California. Her father, saying there is too much opportunity for him to leave, remains. Anna, through memory and later through her father's journals, continues to tell her family's story, a story of betrayal, reconciliation, and love.

Its hard to believe that this is Caldwell's first novel. She grabs our attention from the beginning: "My father was a millionaire in the 1930s. Polo ponies, a Sikh chauffeur, a villa on eight acres in Hungjao, in the western part of the city. Nights out with my mother at the Cercle Sportif Francais, the Venus Cafe, the Cathay Hotel, the Del Monte - these were the details of his life. He was also an insurance salesman and a smuggler, an importer-exporter and a prisoner, a borrower and a spender, leading, much of the time, a charmed life, always seeming to play the odds and for a long time coming out on top". ( )

A beautiful story of a girl whose father was an enigma - loving and available, yet also distant and unable to commit to relationship with her - Anna grew up in Shanghai with her American parents who nurtured her beautifully, yet when the Japanese overtook Shanghai and it was imperative that they leave, her father stayed on and was imprisoned.

This is a story of relationship - of love and loss, pain and forgiveness. Anna's many transformations within the story were credible and beautifully rendered - I truly got to know these characters with all their beauty and flaws - What a lovely book (yet very painful at times) to immerse myself in. ( )

I really liked this book. I thought the description of the period was spot on (cashmere bouquet soap, Dewar's scotch etc.) The luxury experienced by the characters in Shanghai before the war was yummy. Anna as a child encountered much with her 5 senses..like any young child, and then later as an adult puts some pieces together. This is true to form in real life and brings the reader along for the ride. I wondered if we would discover that the protagonist had an undiagnosed mental illness. Like other accounts that describe communist treatment of their captives, we, like the characters, never discover why some prisoners are executed, some are tortured and some are released.. the randomness of it is bewildering. ( )

Loved the descriptions of Shanghai, Pasadena, Anna's parents. I thought this was a beautiful book, and I love that I learned about world events that I did not know before. ( )