Sabrna dela 18: Tvorac grada
The Maker of the City (1945) was the first novel published by Pearl S. Buck under the pseudonym John Sedges, to try her hand at a story about the American West without the expectations attached to her Chinese works.
The plot follows Jonathan Goodliffe, a quiet, persistent and visionary Englishman who settles on the Kansas prairie in the 1860s. While most settlers dream of quick riches, cowboy adventures or going further West, Jonathan stays in the small settlement of Median and dedicates his life to transforming it into a real city.
As the first teacher, he builds a school (first in a mud hut), introduces order, justice and common values. Slowly, step by step, he builds schools, churches, shops and institutions - he becomes a true "city builder". The novel follows the decades of his life: marriage, family, ups and downs, conflicts with nature, speculators and human nature.
The book is an epic but intimate chronicle of the birth of the American Midwest - without the romantic Wild West, cowboys and gunslingers. The emphasis is on quiet, persistent work, vision and sacrifice of the individual for the community. Buck shows here that he understands the American soul as well as the Chinese: the theme is the dream of a better society, the price of progress, and what it means to create something lasting from nothing.
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