The Coltmans traces one English family from its 1525 origination in the small village of Fleckney in Leicestershire to immigrant Captain Robert Coltman of the Revolutionary Army, down through early builder in Washington DC Charles Lilly Coltman to a Presbyterian medical missionary in China, Dr. Robert Coltman, his wife Lulu, and their six children (Robert, Eva, Alice, Charles, May and William). That family survived the 1900 Boxer Rebellion which Dr. Robert Coltman both predicted and in which he played an important role. The book then describes how descendants of each of the six children had interesting lives throughout Asia until finally settling back to both Great Britain and the United States.