IN the many years that Jennie Chen Chieh-ju's memoirs were missing, an unlikely woman came to learn of her secret past and was determined that she would help to fulfil Jennie's wishes that the truth be known.
Ginny Connor, a secretary in New York City took extensive notes from the memoirs in 1971 and still possesses correspondence between Jennie and James Lee and his brother William Yinson Lee. The former wrote the English transcript; the latter acted as her representative trying to find a publisher in the United States.
''I have always wanted to honour Jennie. It was a terrible thing they did to her,'' she said from her home in South Carolina this week.
Ms Connor was so scared of the consequences of having the papers that she has changed her name for her dealings with the memoirs. She also deposited copies of her notes and the letters in several university libraries in the hope that they would be of interest to historians.
Now Chiang's Secret Past has been published she plans to write her own book about Jennie Chen and the mystery of her memoirs with the help of a Chinese scholar. She said that Professor Eastman had authenticated her book as he was first and foremost an historian.
After Kuomintang agents had completed negotiations with Jennie she was supposed to have relinquished all copies to them as well as her diaries. But at least one remained out of their hands.
After the death of William Lee, it appears one copy of the manuscript remained at his lodgings. It then fell into the hands of his landlady, Muriel Dexter. In 1971, Ms Dexter sought the help of Vincent Rouba, a friend of Ms Connor.
