One issue that often crops up in fiction dealing with foreign cultures, especially those that are remote, non-Western, or impoverished, is a certain condescension on the part of the author. This condescension creates a distance between the reader and the characters and invites the reader to feel more privileged or somehow superior to the people of the story. Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze is free of any trace of such condescension; if anything, the sensitive reader—especially one from a more materially advantaged society than that depicted in the novel—may discover a spiritual thinness on the part of his or her own culture. Impoverishment, after all, is not just a matter of material possessions, but of morality and spiritual values.

Because Lewis herself was a teacher in China under the missionary auspices of the Methodist Church, another question that may occur regards...