Three came home (Time reading program special edition)

This book tells the experiences of a family imprisoned in a Japanese internee camp during World War II. In 1942, Japan occupied Borneo and the author Agnes Keith, her husband and their 1.5 years old son George were imprisoned in an internee camp. As a captive, the author used the keen eyes unique to a writer to observe herself, the captives around and the complicated Japanese who were both violent and gentle. This book records but never renders pains, observes the human nature but never attacks any individual; the author's writing is restrained and touching. In 1950, it was adapted into the same name film Three Came Home by Hollywood.

Agnes Keith was a young and promising journalist in San Francisco in November 1934 when she was savagely mugged by a drug addict with a two foot iron pipe on the doorstep of the San Francisco Examiner. During her long recovery from the resultant skull fractures, loss of memory and eyesight damage, she travelled a lot and on her return to California, somewhat restored, she met an Englishman, Harry Keith, whom she married and settled down to live with in Sandakan in N Borneo. Miraculously, she seems to have made a full recovery from her head injuries and to have regained all of her writing talents, which she lavished on three-books about her life in Borneo before, during and after the Second World War.