Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P'ing Ch'eng— City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love—and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?
Told through Will and Katherine's alternating viewpoints—and inspired by the lives of the author's maternal grandparents—City of Tranquil Light is a tender and elegiac portrait of a young marriage set against the backdrop of the shifting face of a beautiful but torn nation.
“It is inspired, a beautifully written, often riveting, heatbreaking, heart-healing, wise and sweet-tempered novel.”
—America Magazine
“Throughout the unrelenting hardship, the remarkably stable couple remains in China, bound to their newfound roots and to the ideals of their larger mission. . . Katherine's diary entries are emotionally deft, capturing the romance and anxiety of cultural estrangement.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A tale of enduring love between this couple, their love for China and its people, and their love for their God.”
—Library Journal
“. . . plainspoken and tender . . . makes for a lovely sustained chant.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
