The Parlor Maid Who Crossed the Mountains

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London — short, uneducated, and utterly unremarkable by the world's standards. When she applied to the China Inland Mission, they rejected her. Too old to learn Chinese at twenty-eight, they said. Not qualified. But Gladys had heard a call she could not shake. So she saved every penny from her servant's wages, bought a one-way ticket on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and traveled alone across war-torn Siberia to reach the remote province of Shanxi.…