Peony by Pearl S. Buck

I and my family recently stayed with my publisher, Brian Hades, who invited us to help ourselves to the paperbacks lining the walls of his basement, as he is planning to clear them out soon to make way for rennovations. My daughter, Jennifer, took home a big load. I confined myself to about ten. Well, maybe twenty. The first one I read was old and dry that pages fell out as soon as they were turned, so I wandered around Heritage Park, in Calgary, periodically discarding pages of an Agatha Christie novel in waste bins. The second one I read is the jewel that inspired this blog entry: Peony by Pearl S. Buck, written in 1948 and still delightful.