I enjoyed the book, both because I got an overview of Chinese history during the time and for a glimpse of Pearl Buck's life. What an interesting person and life, not at all what I thought I knew. It is well written and rich in detail, yet does not bog down. I found myself eager to pick it up ...
Aside from The Good Earth, I was more familiar with Buck's efforts in Korea, so Spurling's book was informative.Spurling, however, seems critical of Buck's father and first husband, for their remoteness and obsession with their jobs, and of her second husband's perceived abandonment through an in...
The two took the same agriculture courses together, until Hu switched to an arts program at Columbia and Buck sailed for China as an agricultural missionary at the end of 1915. Retreating to Kuling in the heat of his first summer, he met “that darling Mrs. Sydenstricker’s daughter, Pearl,” at a S...