author
Grace Zaring Stone
1891–1991
A prolific American novelist and short-story writer, she is best remembered for stories that crossed borders—geographically and emotionally—and for books that later became films. She also wrote under the pen name Ethel Vance, showing a second side of her literary career.
1 Audiobook
The bitter tea of General Yen
by Grace Zaring Stone
About the author
Grace Zaring Stone was an American writer born in New York City in 1891. She published novels and short fiction across several decades, and her work often reflected a life shaped by travel and an interest in people under pressure, in love, or caught in political upheaval.
She is especially known for The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Escape, and Winter Meeting, all of which were adapted for the screen. She also wrote as Ethel Vance, the name attached to Escape, a novel that became widely known during the years surrounding World War II.
Stone lived a long life and died in 1991 at the age of 100. Some sources also note her family connection to the social reformer Robert Owen and describe how her marriage to a U.S. Navy officer took her to different parts of the world, experiences that likely fed the range and atmosphere of her fiction.