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Pearl S. Buck

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The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma Kindle Edition

by Pearl S. Buck (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 323 ratings

in Historical Chinese Fiction

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A novel set in WWII Burma about a tragic Chinese–English alliance from the New York Times–bestselling author of Dragon Seed and The Good Earth.

Burma is under attack from the Japanese army, and a unit of Chinese soldiers is sent to aid endangered British forces trapped behind enemy lines. China’s assistance hinges on a promise: In return, the Allies will supply China with airplanes and military equipment, much needed to protect their own civilian population. But the troops—including a young commander named Lao San, whom Buck fans will remember from Dragon Seed—are met with ingratitude on both sides. The Burmese deplore any friend of their abusive colonizers, and the prejudiced British soldiers can’t bring themselves to treat the Chinese as true allies. As the threat of disaster looms and the stakes grow higher, the relations between the British and Chinese troops become ever more fraught. A trenchant critique of colonialism and wartime betrayal, The Promise is Buck at her evocative best.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

From the Publisher

From the Illustrated Biography


Portrait of Pearl S. Buck Johann Waldemar de Rehling Quistgaard painted Buck in 1933, when the writer was forty-one years old-a year after she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth. The portrait currently hangs at Green Hills Farm in Pennsylvania, where Buck lived from 1934 and which is today the headquarters for Pearl S. Buck International. (Image courtesy of Pearl S. Buck International.)	Buck Addresses Poverty in Asia Buck addresses an audience in Korea in 1964, discussing the issues of poverty and discrimination faced by children in Asia. She established the Orphanage and Opportunity Center in Buchon City, Korea, in 1965.	Buck and Family Buck with her husband, Richard J. Walsh, and their daughter, Elizabeth.

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About the Author

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize–winning author. Her classic novel The Good Earth (1931) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and William Dean Howells Medal. Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set. In 1934, civil unrest in China forced Buck back to the United States. Throughout her life she worked in support of civil and women’s rights, and established Welcome House, the first international, interracial adoption agency. In addition to her highly acclaimed novels, Buck wrote two memoirs and biographies of both of her parents. For her body of work, Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, the first American woman to have done so. She died in Vermont.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008F4NR1C
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (August 21, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 21, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 16253 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 269 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,469 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1 in Historical Chinese Fiction
- #3 in Classic Historical Fiction
- #3 in Military Historical Fiction

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4.4 323 ratings

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Pearl S. Buck

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Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents were Southern Presbyterian missionaries, most often stationed in China, and from childhood, Pearl spoke both English and Chinese. She returned to China shortly after graduation from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1914, and the following year, she met a young agricultural economist named John Lossing Buck. They married in 1917, and immediately moved to Nanhsuchou in rural Anhwei province. In this impoverished community, Pearl Buck gathered the material that she would later use in The Good Earth and other stories of China.

Pearl began to publish stories and essays in the 1920s, in magazines such as The Nation, The Chinese Recorder, Asia, and The Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published by the John Day Company in 1930. John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, would eventually become Pearl's second husband, in 1935, after both received divorces.

In 1931, John Day published Pearl's second novel, The Good Earth. This became the bestselling book of both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1935, and would be adapted as a major MGM film in 1937. Other novels and books of nonfiction quickly followed. In 1938, less than a decade after her first book had appeared, Pearl won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so. By the time of her death in 1973, Pearl had published more than seventy books: novels, collections of stories, biography and autobiography, poetry, drama, children's literature, and translations from the Chinese. She is buried at Green Hills Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

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4.4 out of 5

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great book

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2024

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I wish this had a better ending. It was an exciting book and a really nice sequel. Highly recommend but, read the first book first.

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Karl Janssen

The sequel to Dragon Seed

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2014

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The Promise, a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck, was originally published in 1943. It is a sequel to Buck's 1942 novel Dragon Seed, but the publisher of the ebook edition gives no indication of this whatsoever. Only after I began reading the book did I realize, "Hey, I already know all these characters." It's important to note because if you haven't already read Dragon Seed you'll be lost in chapter one. Dragon Seed described the 1939 Japanese invasion of eastern China, as told through the eyes of Ling Tan and his family, who live in a village outside Nanking. The Promise opens in 1941. The family is still living under Japanese occupation. One son, Lao San, who goes by the name of Sheng in this novel, has left home and is battling the invaders as a freedom fighter.

The Promise referred to in the title is explained in chapter one. The people of Mei and Ying promised to come to the aid of China if they were ever attacked. Now the Chinese people are waiting and hoping that these two great nations will live up to that promise. Mei is America and Ying is England. Sheng leads a military expedition into British-occupied Burma to help the Brits repel the Japanese invasion there. While in Burma, the Chinese forces are commanded by an American, who may or may not be based on a real historical figure. As she typically does, Buck writes this historical novel with almost no specific proper nouns. For example, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese military, and his wife are referred to simply as the Ones Above. Nevertheless, despite the deliberate obscurity, the reader does get an education into this lesser-known campaign of World War II. Told from a Chinese perspective, the story depicts the Americans and Brits as well-intentioned imperialists whose racist attitude toward their Asian subjects leads to the needless loss of human lives.

Stylistically, Buck's writing is like a cross between the socially conscious realism of the early 20th century, like The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle, and the romantic television miniseries of the 1970s, like The Thorn Birds or Rich Man, Poor Man. Her novels are intelligent, moving, and skillfully crafted, with just a hint of sweet, sticky sap flowing beneath the surface. Still, those with a tolerance for romanticism will not only not mind this aspect of Buck's work but will in fact come to enjoy it. This sequel is actually superior to its predecessor. Dragon Seed was marked by an uncomfortable inconsistency. The first half of the book consisted of brutally realistic depictions of war crimes, while the second half was all rosy optimism. The Promise proceeds on a much more even keel, rarely resorting to either extreme, and the book is better for it. Though it lacks the shocking, indelible scenes of atrocity that punctuate Dragon Seed, The Promise is a thoroughly engaging saga that convincingly conveys the stirring urgency of the life and death struggles of wartime. The final chapter is a bit weak, but not enough to discount the strength of the book as a whole.

Buck is best-known, of course, for her House of Earth trilogy, consisting of The Good Earth, Sons, and A House Divided. Could Dragon Seed and The Promise be the beginning and middle volumes of another trilogy? Though I've found no evidence to support this theory, given the ending of this book and the title of her next novel, China Flight, I suspect this is the case. After the experience I had reading this book, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Ling Tan and his family show up unannounced in another of Buck's books.

30 people found this helpful

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BullybabyMom

War in Burma, brutal in so many ways

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2024

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This was a difficult book to read. There was so much sadness and death because it was written about being at war. The main characters lived quietly and wisely through it all. Read this and never speak of starting a war again.

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Yusuf DeLorenzo

A Classic by a Nobel Prize Winner

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2019

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Why the romance about the forbidding jungles of Burma? After Chamal’s NEVER SO FEW, I began to understand a little of how it might be. So, when I happened across this book by Pearl S. Buck I was prompted to read it for more than one reason. Firstly, to my chagrin, I’d never read Buck before. I’ve driven past her family home in W. VA, and I’d seen the Hollywood version of the GOOD EARTH, but that was it. I actually thought of her as some sort of Grandma Moses of literature. But, boy was I wrong.
THE PROMISE is a great book. The prose is what caught me first of all. Without paying attention, while reading, I found myself propelled through her story on the wings of her simple and natural prose. And then there was the perspective, her perceptive, almost instinctive, understanding of the Chinese culture and of Asia itself. In particular, her dressing down of colonial and brutish British (and American) attitudes toward ‘others’: “We could be free if you did not think it your duty to save us.” This is a timeless book: “Now what is there to tell of a journey such as theirs” she asks. No one could tell it better than Pearl S. Buck.

9 people found this helpful

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Avid Reader

the Promise

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2014

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The Promise is an ok book. However, earlier books bu Pearl Buck are much better. The earlier ones relate more to the old (traditional) culture. It was an interesting read but, in my estimation the story was not as believable as earlier books by this autkor

3 people found this helpful

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Del Mar Surfer

Love and Tragedy in the Jungles of Burma

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2017

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This sweet, innocent novel is an eloge of China, its traditional values, and of loyalty and trust that its leader at the time, Tchang Kai Chek, deposited in the Allies. The love story that permeates the pages of the novel and infuses it with a precious touch presents some of the tension between East and West, that is magnified in the bloody Burma campaign. The English wanted to retain their colony, the Chinese thought that they could block the Japanese assault in the South and receive badly needed equipment and weapons. The brave soldiers succumbed to the enemy and the help promised by the Allies to the Chinese never came.
There is a communist, Charlie, and Pearl is sympathetic to his cause. She could not predict the bloodbath that future conflicts and confrontations would bring. Chen's sister is an innocent child and Pearl finds her a loyal boyfriend in Charlie.
In the end, we are left in suspense: will Mayli and Chen marry? Will Jade leave her inlaws, exchanging them for the freedom of their children?
This novel, like the trilogy I read before, starting with The Good Earth, presents humans subjected to portentous changes that tear their lives apart. However, Pearl always keeps the flame of love alive, the eternal romantic.

2 people found this helpful

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Cathy McMenamy

Worth Reading

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2020

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Not Ms. Buck’s best book, but nevertheless important as a cultural and historic picture of yet another Asian perspective and challenge. As usual, Ms Buck’s Asian characters are fully fleshed. In this particular book her Western characters are more one dimensional.

One person found this helpful

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Charlene

Eye Opening

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2023

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I am beginning to re-read all of Buck's work. Her portrayal of world events, her characters, and social insights are thought provoking. Once, I met her in the home of a college professor at McMurry. The professor was from a similar background. What a fascinating afternoon that was!

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Atl Canuck

great writert

Reviewed in Canada on April 28, 2023

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good story

neat and tidy

spell bound

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2013

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Exciting and interesting to delve into the old world of Chinese culture. Recommended to all readers of history and culture.

3 people found this helpful

Little King

a story of WWll in China and Burma

Reviewed in Canada on July 10, 2020

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I had read a book by Pearl Buck over 50 years ago and likes it so I read this book . It shows how the Chinese army was involved in the War with Japan in the 30s and 40s. The Chinese army walked or marched into Burma to help the US and British armies and the story tells of the hardships encountered. There was also a bit of romance and different classes of people and their reactions to the War. A good tale about history.

wang chow

Excellent

Reviewed in Canada on October 13, 2019

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Prompt service. Book as advertised and in excellent condition. Thank you!

Linda Pfeiffer

Great writing skills, but poor storyline

Reviewed in Canada on July 16, 2020

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Although I have read eleven of Pearl S. Buck's wonderful books since 2017 and loved all of them but this one, I now know why I didn't enjoy the story. I did not read the Dragon Seed which apparently precedes this book and introduces some of the characters just like Good Earth which was book one in a trilogy. That series I couldn't put down. But because the book opens so abruptly naming people whom I should have known but didn't, I was a little lost and found the beginning of the book unconnected to the rest of the story. Then without the context of when the plot was taking place (during WWII), I had to consult the internet and search the history of Burma to find the connection to China. When that became clear I enjoyed parts of the story but found that even though it was taking place during a war and there were graphic descriptions of injuries and wounds, I kept waiting for the heroine, Mayli, to meet up with her likely love interest, Sheng, making it a sort of romance novel. Not my favourite genre. But fortunately there was more to it than that. After so many battles, death and destruction, I couldn't wait for it to end. And when it did end, it just stopped without clearing up some major plot stories. I guess there may be another trilogy since so much was left unsaid. I'll have to go through all Buck's listed books again and see if I can find out, but I'm not sure if I want to meet up with these characters again anyway.

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From the Publisher

From the Illustrated Biography

Portrait of Pearl S. Buck

Buck Addresses Poverty in Asia

Buck and Family

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About the Author

Product details

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About the author

Pearl S. Buck

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