Vincent H. Gowen

Sunrise to Sunrise Vincent H. Gowen

About the Book

In 1913 Vincent Gowen, fresh from university, left Seattle in search of adventure across the Pacific. In 1945, now priest, teacher, husband, father, and published novelist, he returned. Between those years he experienced China - the China of warlords, gunboats and treaty ports on the Yangtze - becoming fluent in Chinese and absorbing its culture. He spent his next 15 years among the Igorot people of the rice-terraced mountains of northern Luzon in the Philippines. Finally, with his family he was imprisoned in a World War II Japanese internment camp that witnessed the devastating Battle of Manila.

In a style that is witty, erudite and often poignant he recounts these years in Sunrise to Sunrise. He sees his place as someone, though neither famous nor scandalous, who endured and was able to observe history as it was being made. These times and places "compressed into one lifetime three distinct epochs: one so primitive as to be haunted by spells and magic; another violently medieval; and a third a 20th Century 'civilization' in which men attained an efficiency in slaughtering one another.... For me these (experiences) made an obscure life profoundly worthwhile."

More than forty years after these memoirs were written, his son and daughter edited his manuscript, added footnotes, maps, an epilogue, and more than forty pages of illustrations, with over hundred photos mostly by the author and never before published. As one reviewer said, this is "a historical and spiritual page turner." Anyone interested in China, the Philippines, World War II, Christian missions overseas, or who just wants a good adventure story should read this book.