Pearl Buck was raised in China by her American parents, Presbyterian missionaries from Pearl Buck was raised in China by her American parents, Presbyterian missionaries from Virginia. Blonde and blue-eyed she looked startlingly foreign, but felt as at home as her Chinese companions. She ran free on the grave-littered grasslands behind her house, often stumbling across the tiny bones of baby girls who had been suffocated at birth. Buck_s father was a terrifying figure, with a maniacal zeal for religious conversion _ a passion rarely shared by the local communities he targeted. He drained the family_s budget for his Chinese translation of the New Testament, while his aggrieved, long-suffering wife did her utmost to create a homely environment for her children, several of whom died tragically young.Pearl Buck would eventually rise to eminence in America as a bestselling author(her most renowned work, The Good Earth, re-entered the bestseller charts in 2004 when it was selected for Oprah_s Book Club) but in this startlingly original biography, Spurling recounts with elegance and great insight her unspeakable upbringing in a China that was virtually unknown to the West.