Emily “Mickey” Hahn

Mickey and her pet gibbon

Emily Hahn was born in 1905 in St. Louis. Known to everyone as Mickey, her family soon moved to Chicago. Out of “sheer contrariness,” since no woman had done so, she got a degree in Mining Engineering from the University of Wisconsin. She hated working in an office, however, and wanted to travel.

Taking one of the lively letters Mickey wrote to her family from a trip to New Mexico, her brother-in-law sent the text to the newly-begun New Yorker, which published it. Mickey moved to New York and began writing all the time. She took a research position in England and from there moved to the Congo, where she thought she could spend most of her time reading and writing. After a couple of years in the Congo, she wrote “one of the most interesting” travel and adventure books of 1930.

Back in New York, Mickey found a sort of “coyote mentality,” as the depression deepened. People lived on subsistence diets, especially the flocks of young women who had come to the city. With her sister Helen, Mickey traveled to Japan, and then to Shanghai, where she didn’t intend to stay long. Helen went back to New York, however, and Mickey stayed. Sending dispatches back to the magazine, Mickey got deeper into the expatriate culture and especially got to know the Chinese artistic community.

Mickey became involved with Shao Yunmei, a Shanghaiese poet and publisher who had spent his young years in Europe enamored of French poets. When Shao bought a printing press with his inheritance, he and Mickey started a magazine. Only three issues were published. When Mickey wrote about him for the New Yorker, however, people couldn’t get enough of her stories. Shao was married, but he also married Mickey. The document which showed they had been married later allowed Mickey to be an “honorary Asian” and kept her out of internment camps for the British when the Japanese took over Hong Kong later.

It was suggested to Mickey that she write a biography of the Soong sisters, three Chinese women whose husbands were powerful politicians, including Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek. They were skittish, worried about defamation, but Mickey, through her contacts, met them and spent time in Chongqing and Hong Kong with them. The book was published in 1941 and was pronounced excellent.

In Hong Kong Mickey met Charles Boxer, a British intelligence officer who was also a brilliant colonial historian. Like Mickey, Charles was not racist and believed the British empire to be over. They had a baby together, Carola, born in 1941. The Japanese invaded Hong Kong and Charles was wounded, then sent to prison camps. He was respected, however, because he had lived in Japan and could speak Japanese.

Asked by a Japanese official why she had married an Asian and then had a baby with Major Boxer, Mickey said, “because I’m a bad girl.” “No,” said the official, “You are good girl.” Mickey spent her time trying to collect enough food to keep her daughter alive and also find food for Charles. As difficulty mounted, Charles insisted Mickey leave, taking the Swedish prisoner exchange ship MS Gripsholm run by the Red Cross. She arrived in New York with Carola in 1943.

In New York, Mickey wrote feverishly, completing China to Me. Americans lapped up the book. Charles was reported killed, but Mickey did not lose hope. He arrived in Los Angeles and flew straight to New York. It was “the best publicized romance of the war.” They were married six days later.

Mickey and Charles moved to England, to Conygar, a dilapidated house belonging to Charles’ family in Dorset. Another daughter, Amanda, was born in 1948. Both Mickey and Charles spent their time studying and writing, though they were also sociable and gave parties. Mickey was not a good housewife, but she was interested in the mechanics of living and how they reflected the culture. After the war, women were once again in an ambivalent position between domestic life and work.

In the 1950’s, Mickey became a staff writer at the New Yorker, continuing to travel and living in both England and New York. In her later years, she was interested in wildlife preservation, especially in primate communication. Charles took academic positions in Britain and the United States, writing on European colonialism. Mickey died in New York in 1997, from complications of a surgery; Charles in 2000 in England.

I had never heard of Mickey Hahn when I ran across her in Starry and Restless [published 2026] by Julia Cooke. I was immediately taken with her insouciant presence. Her witty, observant prose is full of casual details which show what life was really like at a particular time and place. She was curious and did not hang back from the truth. She was “a woman deeply, almost domestically, at home in the world,” wrote a colleague, comfortable with well-known people, but also with the ordinary. Her beloved sisters, her daughters, nieces and nephews found her as unexpected and informal, as elusive as the rest of us do.

Sybil Stone Van Antwerp

Virginia Evans

Sybil is a small woman with black hair and dark skin, a watchful child in photographs. When we meet her (in The Correspondent by Virginia Evans [published 2025]), she is already 72 years old. She is told she is losing her sight. But in letters she writes and receives over the course of this novel, we learn the story of her life.

Sybil and her brother were adopted by a well-off family. Sybil became an attorney and was for 30 years the working partner of an influential judge. She was married to a man from Belgium whom she loved and with whom she had three children. Their middle child died in a swimming accident at the age of eight, however, and their marriage did not survive this terrible event. Sybil turns in on herself and her husband, Dan, must care for the remaining kids, Bruce and Fiona, who was only four at the time.

At 72, Sybil is reluctant to leave her house and garden at the edge of a river in Maryland, where she sits with her paper and pens. A rich life flows from her forthright writing. In a letter to a friend, Sybil writes: “Relationships are the meat of our lives. They are links in a long chain … a story is thus preserved in some way. They are the original civility.” 

Sybil writes to her brother, a journalist and writer, who lives with his partner in France. She writes to authors she admires and to a friend, Rosalie, with whom she has corresponded for years. She writes to the child of a colleague, Harry, who is probably autistic, brilliant at math. When this kid runs away from home, he comes to live with Sybil for a while.

After their divorce, Dan returned to  Brussels, taking Fiona, who, as an adult, lives in London. Sybil has trouble speaking to her daughter, who professes not to understand her mother. When Dan is dying, he writes an anguished letter to Sybil, forgiving her of any guilt over Gilbert’s death. Sybil tries to answer the letter, but is unable to before Dan dies. When she doesn’t come to the funeral, Fiona is outraged.

Bruce, Sybil’s son, lives near her. At Christmas, he gives her the gift of a DNA matching service, which Sybil at first resists. She has a cordial relationship with a neighbor, Theodore Lubeck, a German who escaped before the war. She is also introduced to a colleague, Mick, whose company she enjoys. She even visits him in Texas and he proposes marriage.

In other correspondence, Sybil tries to get a Syrian refugee engineer a better job, fights to be able to audit classes at a nearby college and hears from a young man who wishes her ill, since a case she worked on went badly for him. She quarrels with her good friend Rosalie, who tries to get her to reconcile with Fiona. And finds that she has a 49% DNA match with a woman named Henrietta Gleason who lives in Scotland.

When Sybil procrastinates and the trail on Ms. Gleason goes cold, Harry, with his superior Internet skills, steps in and finds her address. Sybil writes to her and finds that Hattie is indeed her sister! Hattie can also tell Sybil more about her birth mother and father, though she does not know why Sybil was given up for adoption. 

As Sybil grows closer to Theodore Lubeck, he confesses his feelings of guilt, as he escaped while his father and brother died at Dachau. Sybil confesses to him the circumstances of her son’s death, which include her inattention. Confession lifts the inner scream which has lived in Sybil all these years and she feels more peaceful.

Sybil finally does reconcile with Fiona and goes to London to see her. Fiona drives them to Scotland, where they visit Hattie and her brothers. Sybil’s experience in Scotland is “magical and painful.” She invites Theodore to come. By the time they return to the United States, Sybil and Theodore move in together. Sybil, at 80, is indeed losing her sight and Theodore must read and write her correspondence. They take a last trip to Paris, but then Sybil dies suddenly of a pulmonary embolism.

I found Sybil’s story movingly told. After a long life of work, a certain amount of strain, but also quiet dignity, Sybil slowly opens herself to a time of happiness with her daughter and her newly-found sister. She also finds a companion in Theodore Lubeck. I highly recommend the audiobook of this title, as those who perform it have just the right emotional tone for the characters.