Bucks County home of Pearl S. Buck will inspire those who visit | PHOTOS

Tour Pearl S. Buck's home in Bucks County and you'll feel as if you've discovered a treasure as prized as an oyster's pearl.

Layer after layer of Buck's story will peel away and inspire you as you go room to room, walk the grounds and visit her grave. A best-selling author, Buck was the first American woman to win both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes for literature. But her work went far beyond the printed page.

Buck counseled presidents, mothered a brood of children (one birth child, seven adopted children and at least 10 foster children), changed the lives of thousands more children and fought for racial harmony through cultural understanding. The daughter of missionaries, she used her vast knowledge of China, where she lived for 40 years, to bridge major gaps in understanding between the East and the West.

Beloved and admired, she also accepted keys to more than 30 cities, collected 13 honorary degrees and was featured on a postage stamp. She deserves as much admiration as other Bucks County luminaries, including Henry Chapman Mercer, James A. Michener and David Burpee.

"We worry young people will not know who she is because 'The Good Earth' is gone from most school reading lists," says Janet Mintzer, CEO of Pearl S. Buck International, referring to Buck's famous novel about the lives of a Chinese peasant family. Buck, who died in 1973, was born in West Virginia 122 years ago, grew up in China and lived for nearly 40 years at Green Hills Farm in Hilltown Township near Perkasie.

To keep her memory alive, Pearl Buck International not only keeps up her home, but also offers a teen leadership program and summer culture camps for children. It also continues Buck's legacy of finding loving homes for children who need them via its Welcome House program and providing still more children and their families with health care, education and support through its Opportunity House.

Pearl Buck's house, itself, also was endangered, in disrepair and needing major work despite being one of only a few National Historic Sites focusing on a woman and even fewer containing an intact collection of her belongings.

But times are looking up for Buck and her home. A new and previously unpublished manuscript has been discovered and published as "Eternal Wonder," stirring new interest in the author. The home was removed from a list of Pennsylvania's 10 most endangered historic houses and reopened in 2013, after eight years of extensive repairs and restoration.

Today, the 1825 stone farmhouse and surrounding 60 acres play a major role in telling Buck's story and continuing her legacy. Buck and her second husband, Richard Walsh, made major changes in the home to accommodate their large family and provide office space. But it never lost the appeal that made Buck fall in love with it the first time she saw it.

But how and why did Buck find her way to Bucks County?

See the rest here:
Bucks County home of Pearl S. Buck will inspire those who visit | PHOTOS