Fighting Angel

Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul is Pearl S. Buck’s profoundly touching memoir of her zealous Southern Presbyterian missionary father, Absalom Sydenstricker. Andrew (as he is called in the book) set off for China in 1880 and spent most of the next half century there until his death in 1931. From isolated settlements in the poor, hostile interior, he made long preaching trips through lands convulsed by famine, banditry, and revolution. Sydenstricker was a tragic Captain Ahab figure whose life’s