Author. She was a 20th century American writer, who held with far-left politics and documented Communism in China. Born next to the oldest of five children of a poor laborer, her family relocated when she was a child to a Colorado mining town. Her father, Charles H. Smedley, deserted the family in 1903, forcing her to become a domestic to help support the family. At age sixteen she passed the New Mexico teacher's exam and began to teach in a rural school. She had to return home to support her family after her mother, Sarah Lydia Ralls Smedley, died from a ruptured appendix in February of 1910. She met Ernest Brundin, who would become her husband in 1912. The couple moved to California, where she was a school teacher. She never finished high school or earned a college degree, yet she driven to attend as many classes as she could, becoming very educated. She joined a secret organization, the Friends of Freedom for India, which was being closely monitored by the United States government. In 1918 while she was a student at the University of California, she was arrested for participating in a protest against the British in India and for the distribution of birth control information, and was jailed for weeks without being brought to trial. Unbeknown to her, the group had accepted funds from Germany, which was against the Espionage Act of 1917. She became involved in politics and in 1926 joined the Socialist Party of America. The following year she divorced her husband and moved to New York City, attending New York University. She moved to Germany with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, who had been labeled as a Communist Indian nationalist leader, and was credited for starting Berlin's first birth-control clinic. She taught English at the University of Berlin, and did graduate work in Asian studies. Although the couple never married, they lived as husband and wife. Using various names, she traveled between Russia, and Germany often prior to moving from Moscow to China in 1928. She had been disillusioned with the lack of freedom in Russia. It is alleged that she passed information from one government to the other, thus making her a spy. There she began writing for the newspapers as a war correspondent for the "Manchester Guardian" and "China Weekly Review." Her autobiographical novel, "Daughter of Earth" was published in the United States in 1929. Holding the interest of many, the novel was published again in 1935, 1973, and 1987. While in China, sources state that she was assigned to monitor and report details on British-trained and British-directed police in Shanghai, supporting a Communist agenda. In 1930, she then began a relationship with Richard Sorge, a known Russian-born spy for the Soviets based in Shanghai. Sorge was executed in Tokyo for espionage in 1944. She also wrote several other books including "Chinese Destinies: Sketches of Present-Day China" in 1933, "China's Red Army Marches" in 1934 and "China Fights Back" in 1938. On May 29, 1941 during World War II, she returned to the United States, starting a nationwide lecture tour on her experiences in China. She became an advisor to the United States General Joseph Stilwell, who was the military advisor to Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of non-Communist China. In 1943 she published the book, "Battle Hymn of China," her a first-hand account of the Sino-Japanese War. Though out-of-print in the 21st century, it was re-issued in 1984 under the title "China Correspondent." At the time, this book was considered one of the best books written about World War II. She helped to form the Progressive Citizens of America, a civil rights group that was committed to defending Hollywood writers, directors and producers, who had been named as communists or communist sympathizers. After being investigated for being a Communist and spy, and with a history of depression, she left the United States arriving in Oxford, England in November of 1949. Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed her shortly after she left but she never responded to the subpoena. Although incidents may have pointed to her as being a spy for China, she was never found guilty of being a spy. All her life was an advocate for the liberation for the oppressed, from being a crusader for the freedom of India from the British to a feminist activist. She died of acute circulatory failure and was cremated. Her ashes were taken back to China and scattered in Babaoshan Cemetery, which was the final resting place of many of her colleagues.