Gold Fears No Fire

Title: Gold Fears No Fire
Author: Ralph Toliver
Major Themes: China, Persecution, Communism, Chairman Mao
Synopsis: One family’s journey over the course of 30 years vividly portrays the Communist takeover of China and Chairman Mao’s “reforms”.

I had the rare privilege a few days ago of just sitting down and reading a book. When you are the mother of a large family, that doesn’t happen very often, but I stayed home from church with sick children and had the afternoon to myself. It just so happened that I had started reading this enthralling story, and I was really glad to be able to read it through in a short time.

Gold Fears No Fire is the story of the communist takeover of China in 1948, all the way through the Cultural Revolution. This fictitious account follows the lives of a family of five as they struggle to survive. When the story begins in 1948, Noble Heart Lee and his wife Jade Moon, and their three children, live in Chongqing. When the communists take over the city, the family has to learn to live under the new regime. Noble Heart, a reporter, is unwillingly involved in the rigged trial and murder of his editor; when he takes the bad news to the man’s widow he is so impressed with her calm faith that he and his family become Christians. He is soon summoned to his own “struggle meeting”; after a miraculous deliverance the family flees to Shanghai.

Over the next thirty years, we watch the family grow and mature. They end up scattered across China as they are given sentences of hard labor or made to move to the country for various reasons. Their faith is tested over and over, and their lives are constantly in danger. Gold Fears No Fire is a vivid picture of the tensions in China as Chairman Mao tried to create a new nation and wipe out the old. It is also a picture of faith in God that cannot be shaken. I highly recommend this story for upper teens and adults who want an inspiring story.

WARNING: Not for children; a few scenes are rather gruesome, but very realistic according to other material I’ve read about Communist China.