GLADYS AYLWARD: THE LITTLE WOMAN is an autobiographical account of an English-maid-turned missionary, who spends much of her life in rural China, preaching the gospel and affecting people's lives through the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Starting from humble beginnings as an English maid wanting to be a stage actress, Gladys finds God during a chance visit to a prayer meeting. From then on, she is convinced by reading the Bible, especially the story of Nehemiah who traveled a long distance to tend to the suffering in Jerusalem, that God means for her to conduct missionary work in China.

After a harrowing train trip during which she survives the war front and an attempt to force her into slavery in a work camp, she arrives at a destitute town called Yangcheng and the dilapidated home of an elderly missionary, Mrs. Lawson. The two women transform the home into an inn for passing mule shepherds, which Gladys continues to run after the death of Lawson a year later. For the next several years, Gladys preaches the gospel to passing shepherds, and she also goes town to town to end the cruel Chinese custom of foot-binding. During this time she accumulates dozens of orphan children for whom she cares.

The Chinese-Japanese war erupts, and for a time Gladys cares for wounded soldiers as well. But one day her very town and inn are blown apart by Japanese bombing, and she must flee to the mountains with her children. Amid war, Gladys eventually becomes a spy of sorts, telling the local Chinese general of the movements of the Japanese, for as a missionary she is allowed to go freely from town to town.

With Japanese occupation looming, Gladys must embark on a taxing 12-day trip through the mountains with her children in an effort to get to an orphanage in Free China. She barely survives the journey, not losing a child but coming down herself with pneumonia and typhus.

Gladys next witnesses the horrors of the incoming Communist government, and she relates of witnessing the beheading of two-hundred students who refuse to renounce Jesus Christ to become loyal to Communism.

Persecuted in China, she settles back in England, helping the Chinese there to form a church; eventually she heads to America to raise funds for an orphanage and other charitable institutions in China, traveling to an unknown land just as she had as a young woman.