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While students at Moody Bible Institute, John and Betty Stam felt God's call to the mission field of China, where within a few years they were arrested by hostile Communist soldiers, held for ransom, and then beheaded. Though their mission was brief, Christie shows that their courage led hundreds of other young men and women to volunteer for missionary service.

John and Betty Stam were a young Christian couple working for The Lord in China. The year was 1934, a turbulent time in history and the Stams were right in the thick of it. Early one morning the call went out that communist soldiers were approaching their town. Betty was nursing their young baby girl when John decided that perhaps now was the time to leave ... as they began to make their plans the rebel soldiers broke through the walls and soon the sound of rifle buts was being heard as they knocked against the door. Calm in the face of trouble the Stams trusted in their loving heavenly father - and with that faith faced their future whatever that would be. This is a story of tragedy as well as trust. It is heartbreaking but full of strength. It is the story of two young martyrs who believed in God and in his call on their lives. The painful story of John and Betty Stam retains a spark of hope through the power of their testimony and the life of their infant daughter who survived them.

The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.