One of Pearl Buck's best novels. It focuses on an anonymous peasant woman in pre-revolutionary China. Without warning, her restless husband abandons her, and she, disheartened, allows herself to work the land, raise her three children alone, and care for her elderly mother-in-law.

To avoid the comments of the neighbors, she pretends that her husband is traveling and sends letters to herself, signed in his name. An unforgettable story about a woman's strength and a significant myth about the role of mothers.

This novel is a powerful achievement from a master of twentieth-century fiction. "Pearl Buck has never done a better job than this. With a great gift of intuition, she entered the mind, heart, and spirit of the Chinese peasant woman and revealed the enduring values of life." —The Times Literary Supplement