The Parlor Maid Who Bought a One-Way Ticket to China

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London — small in stature, unremarkable in education, and recently rejected by the China Inland Mission for being too old at twenty-eight and too slow in her studies. Most people would have taken that as a closed door. Gladys took it as a detour. She saved every spare shilling from her wages, coins set aside week after week, until she had enough to purchase the cheapest possible ticket: a one-way rail passage on the Trans-Siberian Railway.…