The time: 1944.The setting: East Asia in flames.The characters: Philip Baldwin, a New England major with his first command -- a tough and surly American demolition unit isolated in the great China retreat of that turbulent year; Su-Piao, a strong and beautiful Chinese woman educated in America; and Kwan, a frosty Chinese colonel who loves his country but must help ravish it.The story of their adventures in one violent week on the only road into the mountains marks Theodore White's emergence as a major novelist.In China during the war years, THEODORE H. WHITE served as Chief of Bureau for Time Magazine. He first burst into literary prominence as co-author of "Thunder Out of China", a brilliant analysis of China's crisis. Following the end of the war, he was posted to war-ravished Europe where he produced the acclaimed report: "Fire in the Ashes". With "The Mountain Road", his first novel, White accomplished what no other writer had ever done before: had each of his first three books selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club.