Few among us can look back without regret at some silly youthful decision that had unforeseen consequences. Canadian journalist Jan Wong has had an even bigger burden to bear than most: A Chinese Canadian, Wong was one of the first Westerners allowed to study at Beijing University in the early 1970s. The Cultural Revolution was under way, and Wong, an inexperienced enthusiast of 20, was a Maoist. When a Chinese student acquaintance named Yin Luoyi asked Wong to help her get to the U.S., Wong promptly reported Yin to her Communist professors. Years later, as a foreign correspondent with few illusions, she covered the Tiananmen Square massacre for the Toronto Globe and Mail. When she ultimately remembered her casual betrayal, she realized she had “thoughtlessly destroyed a young woman I didn’t even know.”

A Comrade Lost and Found, Wong’s second book on China, is about her quest to make amends to Yin—and to tell the story of Beijing’s evolution from its grim, xenophobic Maoist past to its recent pre-crash incarnation as flamboyant boomtown. Wong is known for the amusing but ruthless candor of her celebrity interviews, and she brings that quality to her own tale. She structures the book as a search for Yin, as she travels back to Beijing with her husband Norman, himself an old China hand, and their very Canadian teenage sons. With little to go on, she pesters old friends and professors for information.

She learns through them how many Chinese have failed to come to terms with the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, even as they return to a pre-revolutionary culture of entrepreneurism and conspicuous consumption. Old Beijing is disappearing; the new city lacks distinction. Her university Red Guard pals now vie for the biggest homes and sneer at rural migrants, while remaining silent about their own tragedies and betrayals.

As the book’s title indicates, Wong does eventually find Yin, with unexpected results. It turns out to have been worth the trouble, for Wong and for readers of this honest, funny, illuminating book.

Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

Delayed language, tantrums, arm flapping, hyperactivity, incontinence—Rupert Isaacson’s son, Rowan, possessed all the signs associated with autism. Rather than helping, behavioral therapies, diet changes and special classrooms seemed to bring out the worst of the boy’s behaviors. Only when they were riding their neighbor’s mare, Betsy, across a Texas range did Rowan exhibit lucidity and calmness and his father feel some reprieve from his incessant grief and fatigue. Isaacson’s astonishing memoir, The Horse Boy, reveals how, inspired by these rare moments in the saddle, he began a quest through Mongolia to heal his five-year-old son.

A travel writer, accomplished horse rider, and activist for the Bushmen of the Kalahari, Isaacson (The Healing Land) had witnessed the shamans’ indescribable healings and had even borrowed Rowan’s middle name, Besa, from a Bushman healer and good friend. He set his sights first on the shamans of the horse people of Mongolia and then on finding Ghoste, the most powerful shaman of the nomadic reindeer herders in Siberia.

With intensity and candor, Issacson describes their travels by horseback, shamanistic rituals, Rowan’s small leaps forward and continuing setbacks, his own fears and worries after dragging his family across the world, and the miraculous transformations that eventually changed Rowan and brought peace to the family. There’s a reason extreme locales are referred to as Outer Mongolia; the author weaves the flavor of this remote region into his story, from exotic foods that required him to overcome his gag reflex, to river crossings that put both horse and rider in danger.

Isaacson’s journey to heal his son is just that, a healing, not a cure. But he wouldn’t want it any other way. While the author’s purpose was to draw Rowan out of his autism, he came to realize the overlooked gifts it entails. The Horse Boy will leave readers with a new appreciation for autism and the healing techniques of other cultures; like Rowan, they, too, will be changed forever.


Angela Leeper is an educational consultant and writer in Wake Forest, North Carolina.