Incident at Badamya — Dorothy Gilman

IT'S TIME FOR ME TO GO, GEN. IF YOU CAN GET TO RANGOON THERE'LL BE HELP GO TO NEW YORK--I COULDN'T--AND GOD BLESS YOU

After he writes these words, Gen Ferris's missionary father commits suicide. The year is 1950, and suddenly orphaned at sixteen, Gen must find her way out of an exotic land she loves but that is not her own. With little more than a hundred dollars in her knapsack, a slingshot, a magical Burmese puppet, and the New York City address of an aunt she's never met, Gen sets off to meet her kan, her destiny.

But Burma's jungles are teeming with armed insurgents--and Gen is captured by Red Chinese forces.

Imprisoned with six other lost travelers, naive Gen finds her fellow hostages too worldly for comfort. But, as secrets are bared and hidden strengths tapped, she realizes that their catastrophe may be the tool of fate. Gen vows to escape, convinced that her kan is not in captivity, but in freedom, never dreaming of the forces that will finally come to her aid....