rural eastern China · 1931 · citedThe Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck
Wang Lung, a poor farmer, rises through his devotion to the land, marrying the plain, steadfast slave O-lan, until famine drives the family south to a great city and back, and returning fortune lifts them into a wealth that draws the next generation away from the soil that made them. Buck kept her geography deliberately broad, but rooted it in the real farming country of eastern China she knew: the fields and the great landlord's house, and the southern city where the starving family scatters in the streets.
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