Susan Conley's gripping memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune, about her relocation to China and her battle with cancer--two equally foreign countries she must navigate--has a clarity of voice that is never maudlin. Conley gives us--at a time when we are all curious--both an insider's and an outsider's view of China. I read The Foremost Good Fortune in a white heat--I could not put it down and missed it as I'd miss a friend who had, say, gone to China, when I closed the last page.