Book Review

In Comrades and Partners, Janet Lee pursues two objectives. First, she reconstructs the lives of the intellectuals and activists Grace Hutchins (1885–1969) and Anna Rochester (1880–1966). Second, by means of shaded "subtext" placed throughout the narrative, she questions the biographical process, highlighting the problems inherent in constructing stories of people's lives from the bits and pieces they leave behind. Part 1, "Dutiful Daughters," follows Hutchins and Rochester from their childhoods in wealthy, white, New England families through their separate experiences at Bryn Mawr College and into their young adulthoods, when Hutchins's religious faith led her to China for missionary work and Rochester's Christian ethics drove her work in Progressive Era organizations. Part 2, "Christian Socialists," grounds Lee's subjects in the cultural and economic shifts of the early twentieth century, showing how each discovered socialist ideas and how, as committed life partners, they integrated socialism and pacifism into their Christian activism. Part 3, "Old Left Loyalists," deftly illustrates the ways the international crises of the 1930s facilitated Hutchins's and Rochester's disillusionment with Christian socialism and their subsequent devotion to the Communist Party USA (CP). Lee succeeds admirably in grounding her subjects' lives in the tumultuous events of the twentieth century and rationalizing their seemingly contradictory transitions from Christianity to communism. By placing Hutchins, Rochester, and the CP firmly within the larger tradition of twentieth-century social activism, Lee makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on the American Left.

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