Among the strengths of Spring Moon are the incredibly distinctive men and women who animate its pages and whose lives embroider the rich tapestry of the novel. Embodied in the Chang family and in its servants and friends are the people of twentieth-century China, the architects and victims of a changing culture. Lord has created incisively drawn, unsentimental yet sympathetic portraits: the elderly clan patriarch; the devoted Golden Virtue who retreats into total seclusion at the death of her husband; the gentle armchair revolutionary Bold Talent and Noble Talent, his soldier brother; the loyal family retainers; the idealistic young couple who endure the Long March with Mao Zedong; the shrewd August Winds — poor relation turned businessman — who can prosper in any political climate through his judicious use of bribery; the desperate slave girl who chooses death rather than becoming an elderly scholar's concubine. Each of these...