The Exile [VINTAGE 1936, THIRD PRINTING]

Buck, Pearl S.

Published by A John Day Book / Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, 1936

About this Item

Fine condition cinnamon cloth boards with blindstamped front cover and spine decoration with gold spine lettering. Includes List of Other Books by Pearl S. Buck. A neatly scripted former owner signature and vintage December 1936 date on the blank first free front endpaper. The spine/binding is exceedingly tight and square and all pages, excepting the previously mentioned endpaper vintage signature and date, are in fine unmarked condition. "This is the biography of an American woman in China. It is the life story of Pearl Buck's mother. Everything in it is true except that the names of the people are changed. Much of it the author learned from her mother's lips and diaries; the rest from her own observation. The early scenes are in Holland, from which Carie's ancestors came to America to find freedom to worship. Her childhood was passed happily in the hills of West Virginia, from which she went, the bride of a missionary, to spend a rigorous life in the interior of China. There, with warmth and vigor and understanding, she taught and served a strange people, spending her strength upon them. Of the seven children she bore, only three lived to grow up; only one, the author herself, was born in America, in the stately house which to the exiled mother was forever home. But even in a far country, the dauntless woman made an American home with an American garden and held always before herself and her children the bright remembrance that they were American, and in the face of all danger and grief and bewilderment kept to the end a flaming spirit and a stout heart. "Merely as a story this book is as absorbing as any novel: it has suspense and excitement in its happenings, development and conflict in its characters, beauty and horror and strangeness in its changing background. Though it tears the heart with pity again and again, it is no tragedy. And it is in deepest truth American. Clear, incandescent, gripping in its interest, written in a style of beauty and unerring rightness, the 'Portrait of an American Mother' is an epic of our country. It is one of the noblest epics of our day." - New York Times. Seller Inventory # 007419

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Exile [VINTAGE 1936, THIRD PRINTING]

Publisher: A John Day Book / Reynal & Hitchcock, New York

Publication Date: 1936

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine