MY DAYS OF STRENGTH Anne Walter Fearn Harper ($3).
Popular, petite debutante daughter of a wealthy Mississippi plantation owner, Anne Walter annoyed her mother by studying medicine in San Francisco and Philadelphia. Then she went to China as substitute head of the Women's Hospital in Soochow, a "city of unmentionable sights and indescribable smells." Her energy got her the nickname "Small Typhoon." Buddhist priests spread the rumor that she would gouge out patients' eyes and mix them with copper to make silver. The sick frequently preferred "the death road" by hanging themselves rather than try her medicine.
Not the least...