First published 2010
Hilary Spurling traces the remarkable life of Pearl Buck, the missionary's daughter who became America's bridge to China. Buck grew up speaking Chinese among farmers' children in imperial China, believing herself Chinese until the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee. She witnessed revolution's first stirrings as a teenager and barely escaped death in the violent clash between Nationalists and Communists as a young woman. Floods, famines, bandits, and wars shaped her Chinese years, making Asia her real world while America remained a dream. Spurling shows how Buck channeled these experiences into The Good Earth, written just before China expelled her forever. Returning to America unknown and penniless with a failed marriage and disabled child, Buck had no idea her novel would sell tens of millions of copies and win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The book gave voice to ordinary Chinese people in ways no Western or Chinese writer had attempted before. Spurling reveals how Buck's unique perspective allowed her to foresee China's rise as a superpower and recognize the vital need for Chinese-American understanding, making her story essential for grasping today's Chinese reawakening.
Genres: 20th-century, american, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, historical-figure
Setting: China, America
Period: Imperial China, Boxer Rebellion, Nationalist-Communist Conflict
304 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster