Pearl S. Buck

A young Chinese woman falls in love with a Jewish man in nineteenth-century China in this evocative novel by the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Good Earth.
In 1850s China, a young girl, Peony, is sold to work as a bondmaid for a rich Jewish family in Kaifeng. Jews have lived for centuries in this region of the country, but by the mid-nineteenth century, assimilation has begun taking its toll on their small enclave. When...

Retells the Old Testament stories from the Bible in the language of today.

A young farmer named Wang Lung marries a selfless, loyal slave girl, O-Lan. Wang is initially devoted to the land and rises to prosperity. Later, however, Wang deserts the land and takes a second wife and tragedy threatens to overwhelm him. Eventually Wang realizes that the land and O-Lan mean more to him than his wealth.

A college graduate returns to her hometown in Pennsylvania. Then "an unfortunate love affair, a mother's long illness, the aloof and meditative figure of her father, all cast their shadows. But Joan Richards, in her successive roles as daughter, sister, wife and mother, survives [and] grows stronger ... with fulfillment just ahead."

"Beyond Wu T'ai Shan were the rich fields and grasslands of Central China where we lived. The Yangtse River, in comparison to which the Mississippi is a brook, is a vivid part of China's landscape. Its sources are in Himalayan snows and it divides China into two areas, one called "North of the River" and the other "South of the River." Both are vast areas, for China is a third again as large as the United States and its landscape is even more various,...