Where Farmers Are Chinamen

THE GOOD EARTH--Pearl S. Buck-- Day ($2.50).

Wang Lung was the poor son of a poor farmer of Anhwei. When he married a slave girl from the rich house of Hwang he hoped his lot would improve, and it did. Olan was as good a wife as he could have picked: silent, a hard and willing worker, a sturdy producer of children. Fortune smiled on Wang Lung, he bought more land. Then came a year of famine. With himself and his family nearly dead of starvation, Wang Lung decided to go south. In Kiangsu they lived like beggars, but they lived.

Revolution came to Kiangsu and gave Wang Lung a lucky break. In the uproar he stumbled on a good windfall of loot, and back they all went to Anhwei. The farm was in a dreadful state, but money mended matters; soon Wang Lung was richest man in the village. Famines came again but he outrode them. Olan served him well and truly, lived to see herself supplanted by Lotus, a pretty but sterile harlot-mistress. Wang Lung's sons grew up to disappoint him. He was proud of their superior education but grieved that they cared nothing for the good earth from which their fortune had sprung. Just before his death he overheard them planning to sell his old farm, the only thing he really loved.

The Author. Pearl S. Buck (Mrs. J. Lossing Buck), daughter of U. S. missionaries, has lived so long in China that she ought to know whereof she writes, but The Good Earth, except for minor details, might have been laid in the U. S., in any agricultural country. This may mean that men are the same everywhere; it may mean a U. S. authoress cannot (even imaginatively) go native in China.

The Good Earth is the March choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

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