Something called the Nanjing Incident, where soldiers of two armies fighting for the control of China attacked Nanjing, happened in 1927. Pearl had to hide from the soldiers. Pearl nearly died. American Navy ships rescued her. Pearl's family moved back to China a year after the Nanjing Incident happened. Then she started to write. She wrote because she needed money to support her family. In 1929, Pearl and her family went back to America to get Carol medical care. In America, her first book was published. It was called "". It was accepted for publication by a man named Richard Walsh, with whom Buck would later live after she left her husband. She went back to Nanjing later in 1929, and then she started to write "The Good Earth". She finished the book in less than one year.