Voices In The House

New York: Pocket Books Inc. - A Cardinal Edition, 1963. 1960 Cardinal Edition . Mass Market. Very Good. 216 Pages. This is a Cardinal Edition # C-399 50 cents cover price published June 1960. A book from the Saviteer collection with an ex libris on the front endpaper. Inked name Julia on back cover. Cover edges show light wear. An absorbing novel written with great skill. The critic who wrote those lines in 1953, when Voices in the House was first published, thought he was praising a novel by an author named John Sedges. What he did not know then, but what we do know today, is that John Sedges was a closely guarded pseudonym for Pearl S. Buck, the only American woman ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature . Pearl Buck adopted the name John Sedges so that she could write about the American scene with complete freedom. Known throughout the world for her novels about China, The Good Earth, Peony, Pavilion of Women and others, she did not wish her American novels to rest upon their immense fame. To her delight the John Sedges books were widely hailed and read without any critic's or reader's knowing the true identity of their author. In 1958 Pearl Buck revealed her secret. Voices in the House was published for the first time in a paperback edition and carries the real name of its author. Jessica had grown up in the household of the wealthy Asher family. As the daughter of the cook, she had been expected to keep her place. But there came a day when the Ashers realized that Jessica was longer a little girl. She had ripened into a beautifully, provocative and dangerous woman. She dangerous because she knew the family secrets. Was it true that she had spent a night in a hotel with Edwin, the younger son. And why did she say that Edwin's father had tried to seduce her. Here is Pearl Buck's startling and often shocking story of a woman who put a family's love to the supreme test. It is a brilliant example of how love triumph over a warped lust for money and status.