In October 1934, the Chinese Communist Army found itself surrounded and facing annihilation. Rather than surrender, these 86,000 Red Army soldiers embarked on an epic journey to safety, covering more than four thousand brutal miles on foot over the next year.

The Long March is Communist China's founding myth. Seventy years afterwards, Sun Shuyun set out to retrace its steps and discovered the true history behind the legend. The facts: in 1934, in the midst of civil war, the Communist party and its 200,000 soldiers were forced from their bases by the Nationalists. After that, truth and legend begin to blur: led by Mao Zedong, the Communists set off on a strategic retreat to the distant barren north of China,...