Dance of Life

As with so many of her compatriots, Filipina Maria de la Torre's pulchritude was her impoverished family's only sellable asset. Her father, seeking to raise his clan's standard of living, sent the 16-year-old virgin to be a bar girl in Wanchai, Hong Kong's exotic-dancer hot spot. Sounds like the making of a tragedy. But her experience, which is empathetically recounted in Bars of Steel by her cousin-by-marriage Paul Strahan and his co-author Brandon Royal, is much more complex than that. Often, this true-life coming-of-age story is even heartwarming.

Mary, as she is known, is no Suzie Wong,...