The Long March, a 4,000-mile odyssey of the Chinese Red Army in 1934, would shape world politics of the 20^th century. It was during this year-long trek that the young Mao Zedong rose to power within the Chinese Communist Party. When the Red Army set out from its besieged base in Southeast China, a power clique known as the 28 Bolsheviks was in control of the Party. The 28 had all been educated in Moscow and were strongly allied to the Soviets. Mao, the chairman of the Jiangxi Soviet Base, who was educated in China and more nationalistic in focus, had been marginalized by the Party leadership. Six weeks into the march, the Red Army was decimated at the battle of Xiang River. The rule of the 28 Bolsheviks was badly shaken. Mao’s star ascended.

A little-known aspect of the Long March, however, is at the heart of Unbound. Along with the 86,000 men of the First Red Army—who in one year crossed China from east to west and from south to north while fighting Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalists as well as warlord forces—were 30 women. These 30 courageous women marched for their own set of goals. They wanted to change their lives and the lives of women in China and to throw out the ancient codes binding them to arranged marriages and domestic servitude. Like the men, they forded hundreds of raging rivers, climbed snow-covered mountains, and battled disease, starvation, and exposure to accomplish their goal. Unbound tells their story.

The plight of these women is one that Americans can relate to. They were an oppressed people battling against great odds for freedom and the right to pursue a decent life and happiness in they way they saw fit. Like Americans, they would sooner die than fail in their goal.

Interestingly, the history—and mythology—of the Long March has been most often and best told by Americans. Edgar Snow was the first in Red Star Over China (1938). His wife, the journalist Helen Foster Snow, sought out the Communists in North China shortly after he did and also wrote several books on her impressions of the Reds, including the women. So too did Agnes Smedley, another American journalist. The definitive account of the Long March to date is that of New York Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury in 1985, and the most thorough research on the 30 women is that of Stanford scholar Helen Praeger Young. Two British historians and journalists—Ed Jocelyn and Andy McEwen—walked the entire route in 2002-03, bringing a new phase of more accurate historiography to one of the most remarkable military marches in history.

To tell my version of the Long March story, through the eyes of the women who made the journey, I traveled to China in 2006 and interviewed the last surviving female marcher. Wang Quanyuan was 93 at the time. She was spirited and passionate. We talked for five hours over the course of two days. It was quite a privilege and a moving experience. She has since passed away. In 2009, I returned to China and trekked in the Snowy Mountains. Ed Jocelyn led me along the trail through the most hazardous topography of the Long March—the 15,000-foot Snowy Mountains of Northwest Sichuan Province and the deadly high-altitude bogs just to the north of this range.

Unbound is about the amazing perseverance of the 30 women who crossed China on foot in order to bring about a more just society. They were wounded in battle, fought life-threatening illnesses, and even had to leave babies behind on the trail. They proved that they were as resilient as the men and contributed to the group in many vital ways. My goal in the book is to take the reader down the trail with them on an epic trip across China at a momentous time in history.

I hope you find the story of these forgotten Chinese women as moving as I do.

Dean King, April 2010