Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Book talk brings true tale of tragedy and resilience in the Chinese diaspora to Hotchkiss Library

Book talk brings true tale of tragedy and resilience in the Chinese diaspora to Hotchkiss Library

Author Ian Gill speaks to a captivated crowd about a life filled with mystery, tragedy and resilience at the Hotchkiss Library, April 19.

Alec Linden

SHARON – Family histories are inherently complicated, but few more so than Ian Gill’s. On the snowy afternoon of Sunday, April 19, the Manila, Philippines-based writer brought that dramatic lineage from —the subject of his 2024 book “Searching for Billie” —from the bygone days of early 20th century China into the warm interior of the Hotchkiss Library.

Over the course of an hour, Gill demonstrated to an eager audience of 20 that with a little digging – or rather several decades of it, in his case – the stories of our mothers, fathers and the ancestors before them can reveal startling truths about ourselves.

“You were two sons rolled into one,” Gill told the audience his mother, the Billie of his book’s title, had said to him long ago. “I didn’t know what that meant, and it took me 40 years to figure that out,” he recalled.

The story revolves primarily around Billie Newman, an orphaned child raised by a Chinese-born white British father and Chinese mother who showed up in a basket one day at the couple’s doorstep. Billie went on to work for influential magazine T’ien Hsia Monthly, then as a wartime radio broadcaster, then for top government advisors, and ultimately ran the Secretariat of the United Nations Disarmament Conference until her retirement, for which she was awarded a Member of the British Empire award. This was all despite pressures from the Sino-Japanese War, family tragedy, single motherhood and racism, Gill emphasized.

But the history also carries with it Gill’s own journey of self-discovery, which began with his first visit to Hong Kong with his mother in 1975, when he was a 29-year-old journalist based in New Zealand. That trip, he recalled during a cozy reception for the event hosted by his friend and Sharon local Bill Cowie Sunday evening, “lifted the curtain” not only on his mother’s vast life story, but on the “vanished” China of yesteryear and, crucially, on himself.

“Her story is my story,” he said, “including finding my father at the end – the other half of the genetic jigsaw.”

Billie, pictured right with young Ian Gill, became close with influential journalist and writer Emily Hahn, left, when she worked for T'ien Hsia Monthly in the 1930s and reunited after the war.Photo provided by Gill Archives

The centerpiece of Gill’s book, and of Sunday’s presentation, is the tragic drowning of Billie’s first son, Brian, and subsequent conception of Ian himself, all of which took place during four brutal years living in an internment camp while Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese between 1941 and 1945.

Brian’s father, an Irishman serving in the British Army, had since left the picture, and Billie spent her years on the internment camp as a single mother.

Gill told the audience that conditions were dismal, with up to 50 people sharing just a few rooms. “The worst thing though were the rations,” he said. “Hunger was a constant problem.”

After Brian’s death, a “cynical journalist,” per Gill’s description, named George Giffen comforted Billie, and eventually she became pregnant again. “Their relations had deepened,” Gill put it wryly.

Gill recounted that his mother revealed an illuminating memory of the grief period to him when he was well into adulthood: “All I could think of was to replace my loss.” Thus, Ian became the two sons rolled into one.

At the end of the war, Giffen returned to a previous marriage in Canada, and Gill would not see him until he was 40 years old, having tracked him down to a remote island in British Columbia. Despite the circumstances, Gill said he and his father grew close for the remainder of Giffen’s life.

Back at Cowie’s home high in the Sharon hills, Gill said that he and his old university friend – the two had met in England over 60 years ago – only realized the previous evening that both had met their dads as adults. Cowie reunited with his father at 21 after not seeing him since early childhood.

“Two boys, him and me, looking for our fathers” was how this story of faraway countries and timelines connects to Sharon, Gill said, since Cowie was the reason he had come to Sharon to tell his story.

Aside from his immediate family, Gill’s research reveals fascinating tales from other pockets of his ancestry, such as his great-grandmother who hailed from a country parish in western England and eventually became a hotelier in a Chinese resort town, and her son, Billie’s adopted father, who developed postal routes in remote parts of China and broke social customs by marrying a Chinese woman. He eventually left her, and the family, for an affair with a Russian woman stuck in China following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

The rest of the details are in the book, Gill said with a smile.

“Searching for Billie: A journalist’s quest to understand his mother’s past leads him to discover a vanished China,” was published by Hong Kong English-language company Blacksmith Books and is distributed in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster. It’s available for purchase online via Amazon and other retailers.

Latest News

Motorcycle crash near Route 7 prompts Life Star landing at HVRHS

Motorcycle crash near Route 7 prompts Life Star landing at HVRHS

A Life Star helicopter lands on the front lawn of Housatonic Valley Regional High School on Saturday, May 16, to transport a motorcycle crash victim to a hospital.

Aly Morrissey

LIME ROCK — A motorcycle crash involving a car temporarily shut down a section of Route 112 near the intersection with Route 7 on Saturday afternoon, drawing a large emergency response and prompting a Life Star helicopter landing at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

Emergency responders at the scene confirmed the incident involved a motorcycle and passenger vehicle. Route 7 was closed from Dugway Road to the intersection of Routes 7 and 112 while crews responded.

Keep ReadingShow less
Van strikes utility pole, closes Route 112 for hours

Traffic was diverted near Wells Hill Road after a crash closed part of Route 112 Friday afternoon.

By James H. Clark

A van crashed into a utility pole on Route 112 near Wells Hill Road Friday afternoon, leaving the driver hospitalized in serious condition and forcing the highway to close for several hours.

The crash was reported at approximately 3:20 p.m., according to Connecticut State Police Troop B.

Keep ReadingShow less
Voices from our Salisbury community about the housing we need for a healthy, economically vibrant future

Renee Wilcox

If you’ve ever wandered through Paley’s Farm Market, you probably know Renee Wilcox. For thirty years, she has been greeting you with unmistakable warmth—always ready with a smile. Renee grew up in Millerton, but it was in Salisbury that her family found something they’d never had before: a true sense of home. In 2003, she and her husband Bill were living in Millerton, but Bill—a volunteer with the Lakeville Hose Company—was already part of Salisbury life. When the Salisbury Housing Trust finished eight new homes on East Main Street (Dunham Drive), Renee and Bill were the first to sign on.

The story of those houses is really a story about the best parts of our community. Richard Dunham and his wife, Inge, along with the Housing Trust board, poured years of energy and hope into the project. Renee can’t help but light up when she talks about the people who helped her family settle in. Digby Brown came by to install appliances and bathroom cabinets; Barbara Niles spent hours painting; Carl Williams assembled bunk beds for the kids. Rick Cantele, at Salisbury Bank, helped them with their finances so they could qualify for a mortgage, while neighbors arrived at their door with fruit baskets and welcoming words.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Trade Secrets: a glamorous garden event with a deeper mission

Heavy stone garden ornaments, a specialty of Judy Milne Antiques from Kingston, at Trade Secrets 2025.

Christine Bates

Tucked away on Porter Street in downtown Lakeville, Project SAGE is an unassuming building from a street view. But cross the threshold a week before Trade Secrets — one of the region’s biggest gardening events, long associated with Martha Stewart and glamorous plants of all varieties — and you’ll find a bustling world of employees and volunteers getting ready for the organization’s most important event of the year.

“It’s not usually like this,’ laughed Project SAGE director Kristen van Ginhoven. “But with Trade Secrets just around the corner, it’s definitely like this.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Two artists, two Hartford stages, one shared life

Caroline Kinsolving and Gary Capozzielo at home in Salisbury with their dogs, Petruchio and Beatrice

Provided
"He played his violin, I worked on my lines, we walked the dog, and suddenly we were circling each other perfectly."
Caroline Kinsolving

Actor Caroline Kinsolving and violinist Gary Capozziello enjoy their quiet life with their two dogs in Salisbury, yet are often pulled apart to perform on distant stages in far-flung cities. Currently, the planets have aligned, and both are working in Hartford, across Bushnell Park from one another. Bridgewater native Kinsolving is starring in “Circus Fire,” the current production of TheaterWorks Hartford, while Capozziello is a violinist and assistant concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. While Kinsolving hates being away from home, she feels the distance nourishes their relationship.

“We are guardians of each other’s confidence and self-esteem,” she said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Local filmmaker turns spotlight back on Hollywood’s Mermaid

Esther Williams in “Million Dollar Mermaid” (1952).

Provided

For decades, Esther Williams was one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but the swimming sensation of the silver screen has largely faded from public memory — a disappearance that intrigued Millerton filmmaker Brian Gersten and inspired him to revisit her legacy.

As a millennial, Gersten grew up largely unaware of Williams’ influential career. His teen years in Chicago were spent with friends who obsessed over movies, spending hours at their local independent video store,and watching anything that caught their eye. Somehow, though, they never ventured into the glossy world of synchronized-swimming musicals of the 1940s and ‘50s.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.