Harvest of Hope

by Faith Baldwin

Harvest of Hope is another of Miss Baldwin's well-loved inspirational books. As the reviewers have said of the others, it is "a book of gentle delight, of heart balm, a book to help the troubled in spirit, a book to take up and to put aside, to savor and not to gulp, to keep nearby on a bedside table..."

Like the three that have gone before--Face Toward the Spring, Many Windows, and Testament of Trust--this might be called the inspirational almanac of a woman's year. The author calls it "thinking aloud." It is personal and autobiographical, a book of self-analysis. In it, Miss Baldwin speaks honestly of hard times as well as happy ones, and offers many warm words of wisdom on meeting the challenges that life presents to all of us.

The theme that runs through the book is: "We sow what we reap; sow love and trust and joy, and when the crops are in, that is what you will have." Using the symbols of harvest and legacy, Miss Baldwin shows how each month has its legacy and how every moment of every hour brings a harvest. Always, in the background, there are hope and courage.

In Miss Baldwin's sensitive vision, the sights and sounds and small occurrences of life take on a special significance. Through her skill as a writer, she communicates in powerful terms her own vitality and continual zest for living. Readers will find Harvest of Hope a remarkable journal of a remarkable woman, who brings to each day a full measure of beauty, faith, and love.

148 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Faith Baldwin attended private academies and finishing schools, and in 1914-16 she lived in Dresden, Germany. She married Hugh H. Cuthrell in 1920, and the next year she published her first novel, Mavis of Green Hill. Although she often claimed she did not care for authorship, her steady stream of books belies that claim; over the next 56 years she published more than 85 books, more than 60 of them novels with such titles as Those Difficult Years (1925), The Office Wife (1930), Babs and Mary Lou (1931), District Nurse (1932), Manhattan Nights (1937), and He Married a Doctor (1944). Her last completed novel, Adam's Eden, appeared in 1977.

Typically, a Faith Baldwin book presents a highly simplified version of life among the wealthy. No matter what the difficulties, honour and goodness triumph, and hero and heroine are united. Evil, depravity, poverty, and sex found no place in her work, which she explicitly intended for the housewife and the working girl. The popularity of her writing was enormous. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, she published five novels in magazine serial form and three earlier serials in volume form and saw four of her works made into motion pictures, for an income that year in excess of $315,000. She also wrote innumerable stories, articles, and newspaper columns, no less ephemeral than the novels.

Reviews

[Gena Lott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baldwin's romances are interwoven with Christian ideals and always leave the reader with a feeling of hope.

[Sara Wardrip · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really don't understand what the book was about. It wasn't interesting enough to me, I finished it. On to another book.