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Summary
Summary
Lost for forty years, a new novel by the author of The Good Earth
The Eternal Wonder tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax (Rann for short), an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the DMZ in Korea that will change his life forever--and, ultimately, to love.
Rann falls for the beautiful and equally brilliant Stephanie Kung, who lives in Paris with her Chinese father and has no contact with her American mother, who abandoned the family when Stephanie was six years old. Both Rann and Stephanie yearn for a sense of genuine identity. Rann feels plagued by his voracious intellectual curiosity and strives to integrate his life of the mind with his experience in the world. Stephanie feels alienated from society by her mixed heritage and struggles to resolve the culture clash of her existence. Separated for long periods of time, their final reunion leads to a conclusion that even Rann, in all his hard-earned wisdom, could never have imagined.
A moving and mesmerizing fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Pearl Buck in her life, The Eternal Wonder is perhaps her most personal and passionate work, and will no doubt appeal to the millions of readers who have treasured her novels for generations.
Author Notes
Pearl S. Buck, June 26, 1892 - March 6, 1973 Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was an American author, best know for her novels about China. Buck was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia, but as the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries she was taken to China in infancy. She received her early education in Shanghai, but returned to the United States to attend college, and graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia in 1914. Buck became a university teacher there and married John Lossing Buck, an agricultural economist, in 1917.
Buck and her husband both taught in China, and she published magazine articles about life there. Her first novel East Wind, West Wind was published in 1930. Buck achieved international success with The Good Earth, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. This story of a Chinese peasant family's struggle for survival was later made into a MGM film.
Buck resigned from the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions after publishing an article that was critical of missionaries. She returned to the United States because of political unrest in China. Buck's novels during this period include Sons, A House Divided, and The Mother. She also wrote biographies of her father (Fighting Angel) and her mother (The Exile). She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.
During her career, Buck published over 70 books: novels, nonfiction, story collections, children's books, and translations from the Chinese. She also wrote under the pseudonym John Sedges.
In the United States, Buck was active in the civil rights and women's rights movements. In 1942 she founded the East and West Association to promote understanding between Asia and the West. In 1949, Buck established Welcome House, the first international interracial adoption agency. In 1964, she established the Pearl S. Buck foundation to sponsor support for Amerasian children who were not considered adoptable.
Pearl Buck died in Danbury, Vermont, on March 6, 1973.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this recently discovered manuscript published four decades after the author's death, Nobel-Prize winner Buck (The Good Earth) heaps such good fortune on her hero, famous novelist Randolph "Rann" Colfax, that conflict seems to be an afterthought. The only son of a college professor and his wife, Rann's exceptional intelligence is clear from the start. Buck lingers a bit too long in his precocious development, from the "private sea" of his mother's womb to the process of learning to read. After Rann passes college entrance exams at age 12, his father, George, enjoins him "to see the world" beyond Ohio, and dies of cancer shortly thereafter. The novel often avoids true complexity in favor of lofty perseveration on the subjects of science and art; however, certain moments of tension are evoked brilliantly. When Rann's professor, Donald Sharpe, makes a sexual overture, Rann's mother's response is one of unexpected compassion: "He's in need of love where he can never find it.'" Rann travels to Brooklyn, where his grandfather invites him to move in; to England, where a widowed Lady hosts him in her castle; and to France, where he meets Chinese-American Stephanie Kung, whose father asks Rann to be his son-in-law. In spite of the seemingly global admiration, Rann does not always get what he wants. Buck's use of language is masterful, but the ending is somewhat abrupt compared to the rest of the novel-perhaps evident of its unpublished or unfinished nature. Moreover, the ease with which Buck's young protagonist goes through much of life overshadows the author's lustrous writing. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
In 2012, this posthumous work by Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buck was found in a storage unit in Texas and brought to the attention of Edgar Walsh Buck, her son and literary executor. On the surface, this simple tale depicts the life of an extraordinary young man, Rann (Randolph) Colfax, and his journey from birth to adulthood. Astonishing his parents by being able to count by age two and read by three, Rann proves himself to be intellectually beyond his years when he begins college at age 12. However, his life begins to change following a dose of unwelcome reality when he is approached sexually by the one male professor for whom he had much scholarly admiration. Later, Rann's transition to adulthood comes to full fruition when he meets Lady Mary, an older Englishwoman, while traveling abroad. Finally, he becomes enamored of Stephanie, a half-Chinese and half-American girl living in Paris with her Chinese father. VERDICT Written with sensitivity and subtleness, this work makes it easy to see why Buck garnered literary accolades. Her experience in China is evident, as are the strong themes of personal and cultural identity. Forty years after Buck's passing, this is still a thoughtful work to be shared with a new generation of readers.-Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.