by Sean Chaffin | Buyers, with cash in hand, gather around a suburban storage facility ready to bid on a unit in which someone has gotten behind in payments. The onlookers can only peer inside, bidding in hopes to find something of value among dusty, old furniture and clothes.
This scene played out in Fort Worth in late-2012, and one woman's bid would unearth a literary treasure –two copies of an unpublished manuscript (one typed and one hand-written) by author Pearl S. Buck. A literary legend, Buck spent much of her early life in China with her missionary parents. She would later go on to write numerous novels, non-fiction works and short stories. It was the publication of her seminal novel The Good Earth in 1931, which was set in China and harkened back to her time in the country, which earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 and became a must-read for high school English classes. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938 for contributions to the world of literature. The lucky bidder, who has chosen to remain anonymous, contacted Buck's family and was paid a finder's fee for the work.
"Someone, and I do not know who, took the manuscript from the house in which [Buck] died in Vermont and went away with it," Buck's son Edgar Walsh, who oversees his mother's literary works, told National Public Radio in May. "Whoever that person was wound up in Texas, rented a storage unit and put the manuscript in there. And that's where it was found."
How the manuscript wound up in Fort Worth remains a mystery, but experts have verified that the work was definitely a Buck novel. The work is titled The Eternal Wonder and was published Oct. 22 by Open Road Media, the publisher of 27 of her other works.
"There was never any doubt," Open Road Media Publisher Tina Pohlman says. "It was verified not only by recognizing her handwriting but also by recognizing real-life experiences, places, people and things from Pearl Buck's life that she included in the novel. Not to mention that the book touches on all of the themes that she explored throughout her life."
Pohlman says The Eternal Wonderis a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes important to Buck. It is a coming-of-age tale of Randolph Colfax, a gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, and on a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will "change his life forever –and, ultimately, to love."
Cancer took the author's life in 1973, but the new work adds to her writing legacy. This unique, circuitous publishing event has captured the minds of media and readers across the country –including Fort Worth's unique role in bringing this book to the reading masses.
"The reaction has been absolutely incredible and fits in perfectly with Open Road's mission to bring the greats back to life," says Pohlman. "As one of only two American women to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize, and as a passionate and active humanitarian, Pearl Buck's legacy is unmatched.The Eternal Wonderis in many ways a culmination of her work as a writer and as a humanitarian. Above all, it's a wonderful story."
