Katharine Boehner Hockin

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Katharine Hockin, a Canadian missionary in China for many years, is now
the United Church’s foremost missiologist. This book begins with
Hockin’s parents, also missionaries in China, and concludes with an
83-year-old Hockin living in Toronto.

Although Hockin’s life after 1960 receives fairly short shrift, the
book is well researched, enriched not only by its collection of private
photos but by the authors’ reference to more than 6000 letters
discovered in Hockin’s attic late in the research. The splendidly
written text recounts the reasons for the successes and failures of the
Protestant missionary movement in China. The authors are admirably
candid about their subject, an intelligent, strong-minded woman who, it
is clear, did not always get along with others.

Unfortunately the book does not contain an index—possibly because the
authors were exhausted after putting so much energy into their research
and writing.