Rivers, Rice Fields, Souls: Memoirs of My Mission in China [Signed]

White black and green pictorial jacket; octavo with yellow cross-hatched patterned boards; 226 pages; maps (on lining papers) portrait; 21 cm. "The account of Father Efrem Trettel O.F.M., Italian Franciscan Missionary from Trent, now stationed in San Francisco. He tells how the Church was uprooted in one part of China and how the very soul of the people struggled with a monster that even outdid their own symbolic dragon. [.] Father Trettel's story deals with the few years of the Communist take-over. Too few know it. Fewer have pondered it. But the Church is painfully aware of the 600,000,000 souls impounded behind the bamboo curtain." --Jacket. Trettel lived in San Francisco from 1953 until his death in 2017. Near fine copy in very good jacket, with small closed tear near spine of DJ and on back cover bottom edge; fading to spine title First Edition (presumed; no prior editions or printings cited).