Secrets of the heart: stories

by Pearl S. Buck

Pearl Buck is concerned with the joys and pains of love in her novella Wonderful Woman and the stories Here and Now, Morning in the Park, The Woman in the Waves, and Secrets of the Heart

Genres: Short Stories, Classics

191 pages

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for The Good Earth, the best-selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and which won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China" and for her "masterpieces", two memoir-biographies of her missionary parents.
Buck was born in West Virginia, but in October 1892, her parents took their 4-month-old baby to China. As the daughter of missionaries and later as a missionary herself, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, with her parents, and in Nanjing, with her first husband. She and her parents spent their summers in a villa in Kuling, Mount Lu, Jiujiang, and it was during this annual pilgrimage that the young girl decided to become a writer. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, then returned to China. From 1914 to 1932, after marrying John Lossing Buck she served as a Presbyterian missionary, but she came to doubt the need for foreign missions. Her views became controversial during the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, leading to her resignation. After returning to the United States in 1935, she married the publisher Richard J. Walsh and continued writing prolifically. She became an activist and prominent advocate of the rights of women and racial equality, and wrote widely on Chinese and Asian cultures, becoming particularly well known for her efforts on behalf of Asian and mixed-race adoption.

Reviews

[Peony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not her best work .... The stories weren't interesting imo

[Teri Drake-Floyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the main novella in this compilation, but it left me feeling weird at the end. As a feminist, finding yourself rooting for a woman who wants to give up ambitions and be "kept" was a weird feeling. But it was a very enjoyable novella and I loved the way she captured the pressure of living in the shadow of someone who has been built up larger than life.

[Sherrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

My book has a cover....anyway there are five stories in this book of Pearl's and I liked them all.