Pearl S. Buck

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck , also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, China. Her novel The Good Earth was the bestselling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces. She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Originally named Comfort by her parents, Pearl Sydenstricker was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, to Caroline Stulting and Absalom Sydenstricker. Her parents, Southern Presbyterian missionaries, traveled to China soon after their marriage on July 8, 1880, but returned to the United States for Pearls birth. When Pearl was five months old, the family arrived in China, first in Huaian and then in 1896 moved to Zhenjiang , near Nanking.

Source: Wikipedia