SEEDTIME AND HARVEST

by Eleanor Blake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 8, 1935

Here's a book that combines the homely simplicity of As the Earth Turns with the pioneer vitality of Giants in the Earth. Don't mistake it for ""just another novel of the soil"" -- it is, first and foremost, the unfolding of a woman in her relations with the man she marries, and resents. The material is new -- second generation Norwegian pioneers in Northern Michigan, with the conflict between the traditions of the fatherland and the reaching out for the new freedom. And the growth of the central character is the real plot of the book, a searching revelation in simple terms, of the effect on an ambitious, untutored girl of a marriage made necessary by a moment of passion, and of the subsequent bondage of a fast-growing family, dependent old folks, the demands of the seasonal round, the quiet dominance of the man she has married with his assumption that hers is the normal life, and that with marriage her ambitions are buried. Marriage changes them both -- and eventually, in her daughter, the mother realizes the turn of the wheel and the need for her to give the understanding she had lacked....There are universal psychological problems of marriage in this story, and for that reason the appeal should be wider than the average farm story. I liked it-for its human quality, for its simplicity, for its beauty of style....The author is the daughter of Eleanor Atkinson, author of Greyfriar's Bobby.

Pub Date: Aug. 8, 1935

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1935

Categories: NONFICTION