History is filled with names like Dr. Norman Bethune. The number of sources that talk about him and his actions are numerous. But in the novel The Communist's Daughter, Dennis Bock has added a dimension of feeling to Bethune's biography that makes a reader understand his life better.

Page 3

It is my hope that your understanding will win out against any mistrust or anger you may harbour against me when you finally read this. It is so easy to feel anger, and Lord know I deserve a good dose of it. But I am trying, and you will see I have been trying for quite some time. I also hope that you will read this many years from now, when you are grown, at a time when this story will be long past. With an adult's eyes it is more likely that you will see this letter for what it is, and know the regret and tenderness I feel as I compose this history for you. Of course, I know I have no control over any of this, yet still I hope. The dead must relinquish so much.

Bethune is known by many as being a doctor whose work in the battlefields of Spain and China was documented well. (Wikipedia page for Norman Bethune) But fictionalized, his life seems less heroic and more personalized, making it more interesting to know.

Link to my complete review ( )

I really wanted to like this book because I'm a China buff and I've been interested in Norman Bethune since a sinophile history teacher of mine in high school told me stories about him. But even though the wooden, pompous, puffed up manner of Bock's literary Bethune may have been absolutely true to life (I don't know), I found the book just didn't have the dramatic tension that I'd hoped for. I totally appreciated the moral ambivalence of the story though -- trying to come to terms with what it means on a personal level to commit moral treachery against individuals (stealing, abandonment) for the greater good. ( )