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Anchee Min's recent novel, Pearl of China, comes out today! I was fortunate to receive a review copy from Leila and Bloomsbury.


The blurb:
In the small southern China town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family. Pearl is the headstrong daughter of zealous Christian missionaries. She will grow up to become Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel Prize-winning writer and activist, but for now she is just a girl embarrassed by her blonde hair and enchanted by her new Chinese friend.

Moving out into the world together, the two enter the intellectual fray, confide their beliefs and dreams, and experience love and motherhood. But these are times of great tumult. When a bloody civil war erupts, Pearl is forced to flee the country ahead of angry mobs. Willow remains loyal to her exiled friend, but under Mao's repressive new regime, her "imperialist" ties jeopardize both her husband's career and her own safety. Worlds apart, the women's lives remain entwined.

Ambitious and deeply moving, Anchee Min's stunning novel Pearl of China celebrates an incredible friendship and brings new color to the life of Pearl S. Buck, a woman whose unwavering lover for the country of her youth eventually led her to be hailed as a national heroine in China.

Review:
I was very excited at the chance to review Anchee Min's Pearl of China. I have an uncle who would carefully select books for me. When I was in fifth grade, he introduced me to Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. The Good Earth was the first grown up book that I read; the story was so absorbing and sad that it stayed with me for a long time. It was The Good Earth that sparked my interest in China.

In Pearl of China, Anchee Min introduces Pearl S. Buck at a young age. We meet Pearl as a young girl as she befriends Willow, a young Chinese girl. Pearl Sydenstricker is the daughter of American missionaries stationed in Chin-kiang, a small town south of the Yangtze River. The villagers are not interested in converting but they're drawn to the Sydenstrickers because of the food, medicine and music that they offer.

Pearl and Willow's friendship gets off on a rocky start but they quickly become inseparable. Curious, active, and high spirited girls, Pearl and Willow get into all sorts of adventures. They lived under the Qing Dynasty and survived the Boxer Rebellion in relative innocence until the Sydenstrickers were forced to retreat to Shanghai. After this separation and by the time that they're 14, Pearl and Willow's lives take very different directions. Pearl is in a missionary middle school in Shanghai while Willow is engaged to a wealthy older man.

Though the friends live very different lives, they make a point of seeing each other and remain very close friends. This friendship continues even after Pearl moves to the United States for college. When Pearl and her husband return to China years later, Pearl confides the details of her life to Willow. Willow shares her own life's disappointments and the women continue to find strength in their friendship - even years later when Pearl is forced to leave China and their letters are censored.

Violence explodes in China and the country undergoes momentous changes from the Japanese occupation to Nationalist control to the eventual victory of Mao and the Communist Party. Like