Life Under the White Terror in Formosa (Taiwan)
This is a reprint of a 1953 novel about what happened in Taiwan after WWII.
It is a particularly sad story about a young man from a poor fishing village, and a brother and sister whose stepfather had sold them to a rich man. The young man is in search of his family's "god of the hearth," which had been stolen from them by some mainland soldiers. The brother's situation was not onerous; he became an adopted son of his purchaser. The sister, on the other hand, was forced into prostitution.
This is a story of life and death in Formosa (now Taiwan) after the Nationalists (Kuomintang), under Chiang Kai-Shek, took it over from the Japanese, at the end of WWII. The Kuomintang regime was brutal, and this period is known as the time of the "White Terror." The protagonist is an American journalist who comes upon, and tries to help, these three people.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the history of Taiwan.
