Friday Finds-Feb. 19

Should Be Reading asks you to share what books you discovered this week that interest you!

 The book that caught my eye this week I found at both the GoodReads website and in the Shelf Awareness newsletter.

Here is a summary of Pearl of China by Ancee Min from the Bloomsbury website:

In the small southern 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 of the times, confide their hopes and dreams, and survive early marriages gone bad. But when civil war erupts between the Nationalists and Communists, Pearl’s family is forced to flee the country ahead of angry mobs. Willow, despite close ties to Mao’s inner circle, is punished for her loyalty to her ‘cultural imperialist’ friend. And yet, through love and loss, heartbreak and joy, exile and imprisonment, the two women remain intimately entwined.

In this ambitious and moving new novel, Anchee Min brings to life a courageous and passionate woman who loved the country of her childhood and who has been hailed in China as a modern heroine.

I think this sounds like a very interesting book.  After I read The Good Earth a few years ago I did some research on Pearl Buck so I think it would be interesting to compare this book to some of the facts that I learned about her life.

So did anything catch your eye this week?