Shortly before Pulitzer Prize winner, Nobel laureate, and R-MWC alumna Pearl S. Buck ’1914 died 40 years ago, she finished writing a novel titled The Eternal Wonder. That book will be published for the first time this fall.
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| Pearl S. Buck ’1914 |
The daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, Buck was born in West Virginia but spent many of her early years in China. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1914. She became a prolific writer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth in 1932. She later won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.
According to the New York Times story, two copies of the manuscript for The Eternal Wonder—one typed and one handwritten—were discovered in a Texas storage unit earlier this year.
The publisher describes the novel as “a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells 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, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.”
In a joint statement, Jane Friedman of Open Road, Michael Carlisle of InkWell, and Edgar S. Walsh, Buck's son, said, “We are thrilled to discover and publish a novel by one of only two American women to ever win both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. The Eternal Wonder is as brilliant and inspiring as Pearl Buck’s most famous works, and we look forward to readers across the world getting to enjoy this long-lost masterpiece this fall along with Buck’s other wonderful books.”
