Never-before-seen Pearl S. Buck novel will be released this fall

An unpublished manuscript by Pearl S. Buck titled 'The Eternal Wonder' was discovered last winter in a storage unit in Texas.

Pearl S. Buck's most famous novel, 'The Good Earth,' won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.

A never-before-published book by writer Pearl S. Buck will be released after being discovered in a storage unit.

The person who discovered the manuscript, which is titled “The Eternal Wonder,” gave it to the Buck family this past December. It is thought that Buck finished the novel shortly before her death.

“The Eternal Wonder” is “the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris and on a mission patrolling the DMZ in Korea that will change his life forever – and, ultimately, to love,” says publisher Open Road Integrated Media, which will be releasing the book.

Buck’s son Edgar S. Walsh, who is also in charge of her literary estate, said her family is baffled as to how the manuscript made its way to Texas.

“After my mother died in Vermont, her personal possessions were not carefully controlled,” he told the New York Times. “The family didn’t have access. Various things were stolen. Somebody in Vermont ran off with this thing, and it eventually ended up in Texas.”

Jane Friedman, the chief executive of publisher Open Road, told the NYT that the novel has everything Pearl S. Buck fans have come to enjoy.

“All of the themes that were important to Pearl Buck are in this book,” she said. “The main character, the love, the attention to detail of the Chinese artifacts, the relationship this young man has. She writes in a way that is absolutely hypnotic.”

“The Eternal Wonder” is scheduled for a fall release.

Buck was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, securing the award in 1938. In addition, her novel “The Good Earth” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938.

Buck, whose parents were missionaries, grew up in China and lived there until she came to America to attend college. She went back after graduating in 1914 and lived there for some time before returning to the US permanently 20 years later, a few years after “The Good Earth” was published in 1931. Buck died in 1973.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Never-before-seen Pearl S. Buck novel will be released this fall
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0522/Never-before-seen-Pearl-S.-Buck-novel-will-be-released-this-fall
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe