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A new Pearl S. Buck novel - 40 years after death

A digital publisher plans to release a newly unearthed novel written by Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl S. Buck, a long-time Bucks County native until her death in 1973.

The new book by the author of the widely-acclaimed classic, The Good Earth, is being published with consent of her son.  Buck penned The Good Earth from her 1825 stone farmhouse in Hilltown, Upper Bucks County, and died in 1973. She and her husband, Richard Walsh, raised seven adopted children and several foster children on the 68-acre grounds, now preserved by Pearl S. Buck International.

Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company, and InkWell Management, announced today that the manuscript for the soon-to-be published novel was discovered in January and is entitled The Eternal Wonder.

Buck wrote the manuscript shortly before she died.  It was found in storage in Texas, according to the publisher. It will be published by Open Road on Oct. 22 in digital and paperback form.

"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, said Jane Friedman of Open Road, Michael Carlisle of InkWell, and Edgar S. Walsh, Buck's son, in a join statement.

The publishers described The Eternal Wonder as a "brilliant and inspiring as Pearl Buck's most famous works."

The book tells a 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."

Open Road already owns the rights to digitally publish 28 other titles from Buck.

Buck was born in West Virginia. She was the daughter of missionaries and spent her early years in China. A women's rights and civil rights activists, Buck was prolific and wrote scores of novels, non-fiction books and short stories. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938 and was the first woman to be awarded the prize.

Separately from the book, Pearl S. Buck International says it will 'unveil' a reopening of the Pearl S. Buck House with a tour of the house and grounds knonw as Green Hills Farm on June 26. The home's interior and exterior have been under restoration for eight years.