Upstream Odyssey

My fourth book, Upstream Odyssey: An American in China, 1895-1944 (EastBridge Books, 2008), is a biography of my grandfather.  It traces the life of a Protestant missionary, Daniel W. Crofts—for whom I was named.  He worked for the China Inland Mission (CIM) from 1895 to 1944.  He arrived in China as the missionary tide was rising and stayed until it ebbed, half a century later.  He was based after 1904 in Guizhou Province, part of southwest China’s remote interior.  A slow two-month journey upriver separated Guizhou from the coast—and from the world beyond.  Daniel Crofts witnessed the continuing rhythms of daily life during a time of desperate poverty, political upheaval, banditry, revolution, and war.   His experiences illuminate in miniature a central thread of modern world history—China’s encounter with the West.

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Reviews of Upstream Odyssey

"Daniel Crofts not only gathered and skilfully used the available primary sources, but also read deeply in the secondary literature on Protestant missionaries in China. . . . The sad, elegiac tone of [Pearl] Buck’s biographies of her parents is also found in this biography of the Crofts family."—David D. Buck in Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction.

“This is a wonderfully written and very balanced book. We are all in Daniel W. Crofts’ debt for giving it to us. It is a classic study of a fascinating, dedicated, and difficult man.”—Murray A. Rubinstein, in China Review International.

“Crofts has written a narrative that is both intensely personal and of broad interest. The author’s sensibility as a world historian is evident throughout. . . .This book merits a wide readership.” —Robert Shaffer, Journal of World History