Who is Anna Schoene from The Distant Land of My Father and what is their importance?

Anna Schoene is born in Shanghai, China to Joseph and Genevieve Schoene. Her father is a Shanghai millionaire and the family lives in a villa on Hongjoa Road in the western suburbs of Shanghai. Even though her parents are Americans, her father, the son of missionaries, has always lived in China except for the years he attended Vanderbilt University. He loves Shanghai and tries to instill this love in her. She is six years of age when the war between the Japanese and Chinese breaks out and her father is kidnapped. She begins school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart during the fighting. After the Japanese takeover of Shanghai, her father takes her to the Japanese sector where they have problems with the gendarmes which scare her. A week after her seventh birthday, Anna and her mother sail for Los Angeles, arriving on February 15, 1938. They live in South Pasadena a few blocks from Anna's grandmother. She attends the Oneonta Grammar School for first grade and then South Pasadena Junior High. She is fourteen when her father is repatriated and comes to South Pasadena to live with them, and then returns to China ten months later. When Anna and Genevieve travel to Shanghai, things don't work out and the women return home. Anna knows that she will never return to Shanghai and that there is no more waiting for her father. In California, she attends South Pasadena High School and then the University of California at Los Angeles. She marries Jack Bradley in 1953. They have two daughters, Genevieve and Heather. Anna reconciles with Joseph after Genevieve's birth. In 1981, Anna and Heather visit Shanghai.