This Proud Heart — Pearl S. Buck

As her second marriage approaches, a brilliant and independent sculptor faces tensions between her art and everyday life

This Proud Heart narrates the experience of a gifted sculptor and her struggle to reconcile her absorbing career with society's domestic expectations. Susan Gaylord is talented, loving, equipped with a strong moral sense, and adept at anything she puts her hand to, from housework to playing the piano to working with marble and clay. But the intensity of her artistic calling comes at a price, isolating her from other people -- at times, even from her own family. When her husband dies and she remarries, she finds herself once again comparing the sacrifice of solitude to that of commitment. With a heroine who is naturalistic yet compellingly larger than life, This Proud Heart is incomparable in its sympathetic study of character.