Newly Discovered Pearl Buck Novel to be Published

Posted on May 28, 2013

A previously unpublished novel by Pearl Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, has been discovered. Pearl also won the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times reports that the manuscript for The Eternal Wonder was found in a storage unit in Texas.

Pearl's son, Edgar S. Walsh, says the novel was completed before she died of cancer in 1973. The novel will be published by Open Road on October 22, 2013.

Walsh told the Times, "After my mother died in Vermont, her personal possessions were not carefully controlled. The family didn't have access. Various things were stolen. Somebody in Vermont ran off with this thing, and it eventually ended up in Texas."

It is great they were able to finally find her lost novel. Walsh, Jane Friedman of Open Road and Michael Carlisle of InkWell issued the following joint statement: "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."

The publisher says the novel tells the coming-of-age story of 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."