The Good Earth: Summary Pearl Buck’s novel, The Good Earth, takes place in the early twentieth century in China just before the Revolution. Buck lived in China months after she was born until she was 17 and returned to America for college. She soon returned to China to marry John Buck, an American agricultural specialist who taught American farming methods to the Chinese. In 1931 she published her second book, The Good Earth, which is a collection of three novels- The Good Earth, Sons, and A House Divided. Her second book tells the story of a Chinese peasant named Wang Lung who went from rags to riches as a farmer. With an