Beth Worthy
9/2/2013
If there’s anything the public enjoys more than a new novel from their favorite author, it’s a new novel from a world-renowned author previously thought to have published all of their work prior to their death.
Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Pearl S. Buck, who exploded onto the scene in 1931 with the release of her novel, The Good Earth, based on her childhood upbringing in China as the daughter of American missionaries, will once again be lining bookshelves. ‘The Eternal Wonder’ will be released in October.
By the time she died in 1973, Buck had charmed the literary world with over 100 books. Of those 100, 43 were novels. Not only did The Good Earth win her the Pulitzer. It also won her the Novelist International Acclaim award and the Nobel Peace Prize.
Prior to last December, eight years after Oprah added it to her Book Club, Buck’s career was thought to be over. However, her son, Edgar Walsh, now the manager of her literary estate, received a rather unexpected email.
Apparently, a previously unreleased manuscript, written by Buck, has been found in Texas.
The novel was removed by an unknown party from Buck’s home in Vermont, where she spent her dying days, pen in hand, scribbling away. The Eternal Wonder, at over 300 pages, will mark Buck’s 44th novel.
Whoever took the novel left Vermont and ended up in Texas, where they rented a storage unit. This is where the novel was found, in two pieces. One is a handwritten manuscript, presumably the only handwritten copy and likely the original. The other is a typewritten manuscript of the same novel.
Fortunately, Buck’s estate had no problem acquiring the manuscripts. As the rightful owners of the novel, the estate offered the woman who found the manuscripts a generous lump sum in exchange for their immediate return.
