The Parlor Maid Who Crossed Mountains

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London earning barely enough to survive. The China Inland Mission had rejected her — too old at twenty-eight, too uneducated, too unlikely a candidate for foreign service. By every reasonable measure, her dream of reaching China was dead. But Gladys saved every spare penny from her wages, bought a one-way train ticket across Siberia, and arrived in the remote province of Shanxi with almost nothing.…