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Lamb in His Bosom
In this transcendent tale of love and loss in the Old South, a woman and her family struggle to build their lives deep in the Georgia backwoods, among poor settlers who never owned a slave or planned to fight a war.
Caroline Miller's classic novel follows the story of fierce, courageous Cean Smith as she bears witness to cycles of birth and death, marriage and betrayal in the Civil War era. Richly authentic and lyrically descriptive, Lamb in His Bosom pays poignant tribute to a woman's life lived on the line between the nature outside her and the nature within.
Caroline Miller's classic novel follows the story of fierce, courageous Cean Smith as she bears witness to cycles of birth and death, marriage and betrayal in the Civil War era. Richly authentic and lyrically descriptive, Lamb in His Bosom pays poignant tribute to a woman's life lived on the line between the nature outside her and the nature within.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1933
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7136 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Miller
5 books18 followersCaroline Miller published her first novel, Lamb in His Bosom, in 1933 and became the first Georgian to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The thirty-year-old housewife and author produced one of the most critically acclaimed first novels of the Southern Renaissance period. In addition to the Pulitzer, the novel earned France's Prix Femina in 1934 and became an immediate best-seller.
Miller, the youngest of seven children, was born on August 26, 1903, in Waycross (in Ware County) to a schoolteacher and a Methodist minister. Miller's father died while she was in junior high school; her mother died in her junior year of high school. She demonstrated an early interest in writing and acting and performed in several high school plays. Shortly after graduation she married her high school English teacher, William D. Miller, and the couple moved to Baxley. In 1927, after six years of marriage, a son was born. Miller gave birth again in 1929 to twin boys. In addition to her domestic duties, Miller continued to write short stories to supplement the family income.
Described by literary critics as a work of regional historical realism, Lamb in His Bosom depicts the struggle and hardships of poor white pioneers in the nineteenth century on the south Georgia frontier, known as the wiregrass region.
The stress of sudden fame and attention strained the Millers' marriage, and in 1936 the couple divorced. In 1937 Caroline Miller married a florist and antique dealer, Clyde H. Ray Jr. The couple made their home in Waynesville, North Carolina, where Caroline helped her husband in his business and gave birth to a fourth son and a daughter.
Miller continued to write features and short stories for newspapers and magazines. Her second novel, Lebanon (1944), received a lukewarm reception from critics, and Miller herself was not satisfied with it.
During the following decades Miller wrote prolifically and completed several manuscripts. Uncomfortable in the glare of the public spotlight so many years earlier, Miller chose not to publish any additional work. She remained in her mountain home in western North Carolina, cherishing her privacy and solitude. Lamb in His Bosom enjoyed a resurgence of popularity a year after Miller's death, when Peachtree Publishers in Atlanta reprinted the novel with an afterword by historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. This signaled a new attention to her work by both literary scholars and historians.
Caroline Miller died on July 12, 1992, knowing that she had received what she once declared to be the true reward of a novelist—"the knowledge that after he dies he will leave the best part of himself behind."
Miller was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2007 and into Georgia Women of Achievement in 2009.
[The New Georgia Encyclopedia]
Miller, the youngest of seven children, was born on August 26, 1903, in Waycross (in Ware County) to a schoolteacher and a Methodist minister. Miller's father died while she was in junior high school; her mother died in her junior year of high school. She demonstrated an early interest in writing and acting and performed in several high school plays. Shortly after graduation she married her high school English teacher, William D. Miller, and the couple moved to Baxley. In 1927, after six years of marriage, a son was born. Miller gave birth again in 1929 to twin boys. In addition to her domestic duties, Miller continued to write short stories to supplement the family income.
Described by literary critics as a work of regional historical realism, Lamb in His Bosom depicts the struggle and hardships of poor white pioneers in the nineteenth century on the south Georgia frontier, known as the wiregrass region.
The stress of sudden fame and attention strained the Millers' marriage, and in 1936 the couple divorced. In 1937 Caroline Miller married a florist and antique dealer, Clyde H. Ray Jr. The couple made their home in Waynesville, North Carolina, where Caroline helped her husband in his business and gave birth to a fourth son and a daughter.
Miller continued to write features and short stories for newspapers and magazines. Her second novel, Lebanon (1944), received a lukewarm reception from critics, and Miller herself was not satisfied with it.
During the following decades Miller wrote prolifically and completed several manuscripts. Uncomfortable in the glare of the public spotlight so many years earlier, Miller chose not to publish any additional work. She remained in her mountain home in western North Carolina, cherishing her privacy and solitude. Lamb in His Bosom enjoyed a resurgence of popularity a year after Miller's death, when Peachtree Publishers in Atlanta reprinted the novel with an afterword by historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. This signaled a new attention to her work by both literary scholars and historians.
Caroline Miller died on July 12, 1992, knowing that she had received what she once declared to be the true reward of a novelist—"the knowledge that after he dies he will leave the best part of himself behind."
Miller was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2007 and into Georgia Women of Achievement in 2009.
[The New Georgia Encyclopedia]
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June 7, 2025
I was at Trader Joe's this morning and the cashier asked me what were my plans for the day. I told her I was going to finish my errands, then go home and settle in with a book. She asked me the title, I said "Lamb in His Bosom" and she gave me a blank stare. I told her it was about the settlers in the backwoods of Georgia before the Civil War. Another blank stare, then she told me she preferred books with drama.
Drama? Drama? I should have told her I planned to go home and dive back into this novel of what it took to survive in those years. You want drama, try building a home and a farm with nothing but your own strength and knowledge of how to get it done. Try giving birth to 13 children, not all of whom survive. Try killing a panther after one of those births just minutes after delivering your child alone, when you're too weak to lift the gun, but do it anyway to protect your child. Try dealing with drought, sickness, hunger, danger, all brought to you courtesy of daily life when hard work was all you could count on. Birth, death, young love, old age, it's all here. Drama with a capital D.
The dialect in the mouths of these characters is a form of poetry, although it's not often used. The story is told in narrative form, in rich, simple terms, using old words I heard my grandmother use.
Touchous, mought (for might), sploundered (a fainting spell), nighabout, and a phrase I used to love: root hog or die pore, meaning you have to work hard for what you get.
"A woman has business to be as strong as a man. A man don't mind laying the ax between a calf's eyes; a woman does mind, and has to stand by and watch it done. A man fathers a little un, but a woman feels it shove up against her heart, and beat on her body, and drag on her with it's weight. A woman has to be stronger than a man".
I hate to leave this world and the people I grew to love, but one of the truly wonderful things about books is that you can return to these places any time you wish. This one will be reopened many times.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I finished my reread of this book today, June 7th, and it still rates 5 stars from me. I don't want to change one word of my previous review. This novel is timeless.
Drama? Drama? I should have told her I planned to go home and dive back into this novel of what it took to survive in those years. You want drama, try building a home and a farm with nothing but your own strength and knowledge of how to get it done. Try giving birth to 13 children, not all of whom survive. Try killing a panther after one of those births just minutes after delivering your child alone, when you're too weak to lift the gun, but do it anyway to protect your child. Try dealing with drought, sickness, hunger, danger, all brought to you courtesy of daily life when hard work was all you could count on. Birth, death, young love, old age, it's all here. Drama with a capital D.
The dialect in the mouths of these characters is a form of poetry, although it's not often used. The story is told in narrative form, in rich, simple terms, using old words I heard my grandmother use.
Touchous, mought (for might), sploundered (a fainting spell), nighabout, and a phrase I used to love: root hog or die pore, meaning you have to work hard for what you get.
"A woman has business to be as strong as a man. A man don't mind laying the ax between a calf's eyes; a woman does mind, and has to stand by and watch it done. A man fathers a little un, but a woman feels it shove up against her heart, and beat on her body, and drag on her with it's weight. A woman has to be stronger than a man".
I hate to leave this world and the people I grew to love, but one of the truly wonderful things about books is that you can return to these places any time you wish. This one will be reopened many times.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I finished my reread of this book today, June 7th, and it still rates 5 stars from me. I don't want to change one word of my previous review. This novel is timeless.
October 4, 2017
This book was akin to discovering a buried treasure! How this Pulitzer Prize winning novel (1934) never came to my attention until January of 2016 when I read a brilliant review by Goodread’s friend Sara, I cannot imagine. I thank her for first introducing me to this exceptional book and to GR group On the Southern Literary Trail for selecting this as the September read which prompted me to purchase a copy and begin reading. It’s not an easy book to locate for borrowing purposes, but it was well worth the investment!
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is one of my all-time favorite novels, and Lamb in His Bosom I believe should take a spot on the shelf right next to it. They complement each other beautifully. Lamb in His Bosom examines the American south from a different viewpoint – from that of the poor, non-slave-owning, hard-working farmers during pre-Civil War times. Slavery is an issue that is very distant to them; it is an institution of the “Coast”, the rich planters that live many miles away from them. We gain an understanding of their reflections on slavery, but this is not the main focus of the book, although certainly relevant to the times.
The narrative focuses on Cean Smith from the time of her early marriage to Lonzo throughout her multiple childbirths and ending with the close of the Civil War. This is not a Civil War novel, however. Rather, it is a story about Cean and her husband and children and her extended family - their toiling of the land, the joys and sorrows of raising multiple children, and the faith they must hold onto in order to live from day to day in a land that is as likely to take away as it is to provide. It is about the rhythms of the seasons, the slow grind of daily living, and the tension of survival. In one moment we observe Cean grieving over loss: "she kept thinking that breaths were like threads on a mighty loom, drawn tight, woven among one another, broken singly as each life reaches its frayed or short-cut ending." At other times she contemplates the wonder of the life around her: "All these things buried about her house added to it, somehow; the yard was lived in now, like the house, each bush had something added to it, other than enrichment of the soil, for, together with its history of planting and rain and sun and dark, each bush now had, close by its seeking root, flesh that had grunted or peeped or squeaked while it lived. It gave Cean satisfaction to know about it." Caroline Miller’s writing is sensitive and lovely.
Ultimately, it is the women of this novel that are the real heroes. Cean, her mother, Seen Carver, and her sister-in-law, Margot, support one another as well as their partners. Even in their suffering, they grow and reap more strength than ever before. They are life-sustaining, dependable and ever-giving. The author paints a vivid picture of the people and the landscape of the time. It is a genuine portrait of simpler times that were really anything but ‘simple’. Highly recommended for those that enjoy Southern literature and/or historical fiction. I should mention that the dialect of the region is used throughout the dialogue; it certainly made for an even more authentic voice and I quickly adapted to it and enjoyed it.
"For a heart may be lifted up and cast down in the same moment, as sometimes sunshine comes while rain is falling, and builds upward in the sky tall reaches of misty, unlikely beauty."
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is one of my all-time favorite novels, and Lamb in His Bosom I believe should take a spot on the shelf right next to it. They complement each other beautifully. Lamb in His Bosom examines the American south from a different viewpoint – from that of the poor, non-slave-owning, hard-working farmers during pre-Civil War times. Slavery is an issue that is very distant to them; it is an institution of the “Coast”, the rich planters that live many miles away from them. We gain an understanding of their reflections on slavery, but this is not the main focus of the book, although certainly relevant to the times.
The narrative focuses on Cean Smith from the time of her early marriage to Lonzo throughout her multiple childbirths and ending with the close of the Civil War. This is not a Civil War novel, however. Rather, it is a story about Cean and her husband and children and her extended family - their toiling of the land, the joys and sorrows of raising multiple children, and the faith they must hold onto in order to live from day to day in a land that is as likely to take away as it is to provide. It is about the rhythms of the seasons, the slow grind of daily living, and the tension of survival. In one moment we observe Cean grieving over loss: "she kept thinking that breaths were like threads on a mighty loom, drawn tight, woven among one another, broken singly as each life reaches its frayed or short-cut ending." At other times she contemplates the wonder of the life around her: "All these things buried about her house added to it, somehow; the yard was lived in now, like the house, each bush had something added to it, other than enrichment of the soil, for, together with its history of planting and rain and sun and dark, each bush now had, close by its seeking root, flesh that had grunted or peeped or squeaked while it lived. It gave Cean satisfaction to know about it." Caroline Miller’s writing is sensitive and lovely.
Ultimately, it is the women of this novel that are the real heroes. Cean, her mother, Seen Carver, and her sister-in-law, Margot, support one another as well as their partners. Even in their suffering, they grow and reap more strength than ever before. They are life-sustaining, dependable and ever-giving. The author paints a vivid picture of the people and the landscape of the time. It is a genuine portrait of simpler times that were really anything but ‘simple’. Highly recommended for those that enjoy Southern literature and/or historical fiction. I should mention that the dialect of the region is used throughout the dialogue; it certainly made for an even more authentic voice and I quickly adapted to it and enjoyed it.
"For a heart may be lifted up and cast down in the same moment, as sometimes sunshine comes while rain is falling, and builds upward in the sky tall reaches of misty, unlikely beauty."
January 3, 2016
Two years ago, I set out to read every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel roughly in order and I’m now finishing up the 1930s. It’s been an interesting, arduous, and somewhat surprising project.
After 16 books, I can see clear patterns and the biggest one, by far, is America’s infatuation with its own rural past. Fully 11 of the 16 I’ve read are historical novels set in the country. There’s nothing wrong with that, but many of these works didn’t deserve the prize, while novels like The Great Gatsby, and A Farewell to Arms were both passed over.
So, it’s within that context that I’m reviewing Lamb in His Bosom, a first novel and massive bestseller at the time.
The story is about a family of dirt-poor Georgia farmers and takes place in the decades leading up to the Civil War. In researching the novel, Miller, who was from a small Georgia town, would “go on excursions with her children, keeping her eyes peeled for old people who lived in old houses and might have stories to tell.”
There's no recorded history of Georgian subsistence farmers from that time, which makes this novel extremely valuable. Every detail rings true. Here’s why you don’t want to miss a “candy-pullin,” here’s how women were treated, here’s the home-made medicines people frantically used to try to save a life.
Over the course of the book, Cean Smith, the protagonist, churns out 14 children and works her ass off in stoic deprivation. People die from horrible accidents and infection, homes burn down, animals attack and the best anyone can hope for is to live long enough to get old and weak.
Cean has never owned a slave, or even seen a person of color. The ocean exists only in hymns, and even a lake is beyond her experience. Lamb in His Bosom is at its strongest when it shows us the claustrophobic, isolated, forgotten lives of people, particularly women, in the Deep South before the war. These characters are ignorant and stunted, but also filled with dignity, grit, and common sense.
All this makes Lamb in His Bosom a perfect novel for anyone who’s interested in the period.
However, if you’re just looking for something to read, this is not the book for you.
The novel is hurt by stilted dialogue and Miller is sometimes condensing to her characters—I think unintentionally—but the effect is still “look at these simple-yet-noble country folk.” She also runs into trouble with the plot and the book sort of stops rather than ends.
Bottom Line: Should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the American South. Everyone else, I would suggest taking a pass.
After 16 books, I can see clear patterns and the biggest one, by far, is America’s infatuation with its own rural past. Fully 11 of the 16 I’ve read are historical novels set in the country. There’s nothing wrong with that, but many of these works didn’t deserve the prize, while novels like The Great Gatsby, and A Farewell to Arms were both passed over.
So, it’s within that context that I’m reviewing Lamb in His Bosom, a first novel and massive bestseller at the time.
The story is about a family of dirt-poor Georgia farmers and takes place in the decades leading up to the Civil War. In researching the novel, Miller, who was from a small Georgia town, would “go on excursions with her children, keeping her eyes peeled for old people who lived in old houses and might have stories to tell.”
There's no recorded history of Georgian subsistence farmers from that time, which makes this novel extremely valuable. Every detail rings true. Here’s why you don’t want to miss a “candy-pullin,” here’s how women were treated, here’s the home-made medicines people frantically used to try to save a life.
Over the course of the book, Cean Smith, the protagonist, churns out 14 children and works her ass off in stoic deprivation. People die from horrible accidents and infection, homes burn down, animals attack and the best anyone can hope for is to live long enough to get old and weak.
Cean has never owned a slave, or even seen a person of color. The ocean exists only in hymns, and even a lake is beyond her experience. Lamb in His Bosom is at its strongest when it shows us the claustrophobic, isolated, forgotten lives of people, particularly women, in the Deep South before the war. These characters are ignorant and stunted, but also filled with dignity, grit, and common sense.
All this makes Lamb in His Bosom a perfect novel for anyone who’s interested in the period.
However, if you’re just looking for something to read, this is not the book for you.
The novel is hurt by stilted dialogue and Miller is sometimes condensing to her characters—I think unintentionally—but the effect is still “look at these simple-yet-noble country folk.” She also runs into trouble with the plot and the book sort of stops rather than ends.
Bottom Line: Should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the American South. Everyone else, I would suggest taking a pass.
March 3, 2025
“Don't go along kissing lightly. A kiss oughta be a tedious thing to come by.”
Oh, and it is. A kiss is a tedious thing to come by.
Everything, in fact, is tedious to come by in the 1840s, in this rural part of Georgia.
This rural part of Georgia, these sunken spots of swamplands surrounded by flat spaces, has been divided up and sold off quickly to settlers from the Carolinas. These poor whites have settled on these questionable "fertile farm lands" after being enticed by “get rich” schemes from shady land dealers who took it from tribes like the Creek and the Cherokee.
The displaced Native people seem to slip off into the shadows to be reclaimed by the marshes, making them the mystical creatures of lore. The new residents consider the sighting of a Creek or Cherokee a lucky (or unlucky) omen, depending upon the storyteller, depending on the mood.
Off in the distance, past an ocean that is too vast for these poor settlers to contemplate, others are being stolen from the far-off shores of “Afriky.” They are the legend of stories, the “nigger slaves” whom no one here in this part of Georgia has ever owned nor has ever seen, but have managed to make mystical as well. They aren’t real or human to any of these dirt farmers who have been told that “the world is a ball,” but who can’t believe in such an outlandish thing, “as long as these flat woods stretched yonder straight and flat as leatherbread, through the pine boles.”
Yes, their world is flat, and it seems to be primarily populated with panthers (and every deadly snake and spider known to man).
And here they are left to live, in this cursed land.
But they're resourceful. They are, in fact, more resourceful than we are today, in many ways. We'd have been better off if we'd retained their knowledge of natural cures, life saving remedies, crop production and food preservation. But, we’re too sophisticated, now, aren’t we, with our devices and our foolish dependence on government controlled food sources?
These settlers seem almost feral while facing the wild circumstances of their survival, yet their lives, ironically, also seem more real to me. There is no where to run to, no where to hide. You either lived, or you died. Every day is as simple as that.
This Pulitzer winner, in my opinion, is OUTSTANDING. I was as dazzled by the storytelling as I was charmed by the self-taught author's ability to produce a sophisticated story that can proudly stand on a shelf right next to The Grapes of Wrath.
As far as I’m concerned, this poor novel suffered from two twists of fate: the terrible title (it should have been named The Good Earth, but, unfortunately, that was already the name of Pearl Buck’s 1932 Pulitzer winner) and it was completely eclipsed by another rare offering out of Georgia at the time, Margaret Mitchell’s 1937 Pulitzer winner Gone with the Wind.
But, please, do not fault this beautiful book for a bad title and bad timing.
It is truly worthy of your time. Well, it was truly worthy of my time.
Oh, and it is. A kiss is a tedious thing to come by.
Everything, in fact, is tedious to come by in the 1840s, in this rural part of Georgia.
This rural part of Georgia, these sunken spots of swamplands surrounded by flat spaces, has been divided up and sold off quickly to settlers from the Carolinas. These poor whites have settled on these questionable "fertile farm lands" after being enticed by “get rich” schemes from shady land dealers who took it from tribes like the Creek and the Cherokee.
The displaced Native people seem to slip off into the shadows to be reclaimed by the marshes, making them the mystical creatures of lore. The new residents consider the sighting of a Creek or Cherokee a lucky (or unlucky) omen, depending upon the storyteller, depending on the mood.
Off in the distance, past an ocean that is too vast for these poor settlers to contemplate, others are being stolen from the far-off shores of “Afriky.” They are the legend of stories, the “nigger slaves” whom no one here in this part of Georgia has ever owned nor has ever seen, but have managed to make mystical as well. They aren’t real or human to any of these dirt farmers who have been told that “the world is a ball,” but who can’t believe in such an outlandish thing, “as long as these flat woods stretched yonder straight and flat as leatherbread, through the pine boles.”
Yes, their world is flat, and it seems to be primarily populated with panthers (and every deadly snake and spider known to man).
And here they are left to live, in this cursed land.
But they're resourceful. They are, in fact, more resourceful than we are today, in many ways. We'd have been better off if we'd retained their knowledge of natural cures, life saving remedies, crop production and food preservation. But, we’re too sophisticated, now, aren’t we, with our devices and our foolish dependence on government controlled food sources?
These settlers seem almost feral while facing the wild circumstances of their survival, yet their lives, ironically, also seem more real to me. There is no where to run to, no where to hide. You either lived, or you died. Every day is as simple as that.
This Pulitzer winner, in my opinion, is OUTSTANDING. I was as dazzled by the storytelling as I was charmed by the self-taught author's ability to produce a sophisticated story that can proudly stand on a shelf right next to The Grapes of Wrath.
As far as I’m concerned, this poor novel suffered from two twists of fate: the terrible title (it should have been named The Good Earth, but, unfortunately, that was already the name of Pearl Buck’s 1932 Pulitzer winner) and it was completely eclipsed by another rare offering out of Georgia at the time, Margaret Mitchell’s 1937 Pulitzer winner Gone with the Wind.
But, please, do not fault this beautiful book for a bad title and bad timing.
It is truly worthy of your time. Well, it was truly worthy of my time.
September 18, 2017
This book was one of the two picks for September of the On the Southern Literary Trail book group. I know, I'm like the worst book group member on all of Goodreads. But I finally got one finished in time to redeem myself with these fantastic people and be a part of the group, so there's that.
Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer in 1934, and even the infamous Margaret Mitchell of Gone With the Wind fame declared this book her favorite and said it was the best book written about the American South (for the record, I agree with the delightful MM, but I also love GWTW too; she shouldn't have sold herself so short imo).
This book is the only one of its type that I've ever read: from the pov of poor farmers pre-civil war (and during, too) who did not have slaves. It's brutally honest in the way it represents the subculture of the South back in those days, even as to how the poor farmers back then viewed slaves and slavery. I'm pointing this out because this is a delicate issue in the United States (as it should be), and even though its honesty is valued deeply, it might be too painful for some people to read.
The book follows the family (well, families) of the patriarch and matriarch Vince and Cean ("Seen") Carver. Mostly it's the story of their daughter, also named Cean, as she embarks on her new life with her husband Lonzo. The book travels through decades, and shows what happens to these people through birth, marriages, life, death, disasters, etc.
Never again will I complain about my life (I'll try not to, pinky swear!); I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to survive back then. No matter what happened, you had to keep going or you would not survive. Working through the worst of scenarios no matter what trials you were facing was a matter of life and death.
I found it fascinating to read about how people back then took care of ailments and other medical emergencies. We're so far removed from nature in our current modern society, and there's something to be said for being independent and savvy enough to figure out how to survive with nature and your wits.
Two things:
1. The writing is superb. This is no exaggeration; Caroline Miller was decades ahead of her time in the way she wrote her lovely book.
2. I didn't think that there was enough story line having to do with the civil war. I realize that the book would have probably been 1000+ pages if Miller had done this, but I'd rather have that since this felt rushed and clipped.
Anyhoo, this book is a total recommend for people who like historical fiction, family sagas, Southern literature, survival, a good mix of romance, heartbreak, sweeping family dysfunction, and an ever-changing cultural landscape. It's an A+ read.
Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer in 1934, and even the infamous Margaret Mitchell of Gone With the Wind fame declared this book her favorite and said it was the best book written about the American South (for the record, I agree with the delightful MM, but I also love GWTW too; she shouldn't have sold herself so short imo).
This book is the only one of its type that I've ever read: from the pov of poor farmers pre-civil war (and during, too) who did not have slaves. It's brutally honest in the way it represents the subculture of the South back in those days, even as to how the poor farmers back then viewed slaves and slavery. I'm pointing this out because this is a delicate issue in the United States (as it should be), and even though its honesty is valued deeply, it might be too painful for some people to read.
The book follows the family (well, families) of the patriarch and matriarch Vince and Cean ("Seen") Carver. Mostly it's the story of their daughter, also named Cean, as she embarks on her new life with her husband Lonzo. The book travels through decades, and shows what happens to these people through birth, marriages, life, death, disasters, etc.
Never again will I complain about my life (I'll try not to, pinky swear!); I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to survive back then. No matter what happened, you had to keep going or you would not survive. Working through the worst of scenarios no matter what trials you were facing was a matter of life and death.
I found it fascinating to read about how people back then took care of ailments and other medical emergencies. We're so far removed from nature in our current modern society, and there's something to be said for being independent and savvy enough to figure out how to survive with nature and your wits.
Two things:
1. The writing is superb. This is no exaggeration; Caroline Miller was decades ahead of her time in the way she wrote her lovely book.
2. I didn't think that there was enough story line having to do with the civil war. I realize that the book would have probably been 1000+ pages if Miller had done this, but I'd rather have that since this felt rushed and clipped.
Anyhoo, this book is a total recommend for people who like historical fiction, family sagas, Southern literature, survival, a good mix of romance, heartbreak, sweeping family dysfunction, and an ever-changing cultural landscape. It's an A+ read.
March 10, 2020
Rating: 4.5* of five
What a read, what a ride, what a life I led reading Cean's tribulations. What a miserable thing it is to be a woman, apparently, and how hard it is to love another! Forget the hell out of children.
Only to lose them as soon as you writhe, scream, push, expel them. My gawd, the only comfort is Gawd.
But in spite of all that, Caroline Miller is a storyteller and I kept going although I don't believe in gawd, ain't straight, and have always had money. Why? Because this is why I read: to discover. I discovered a lot reading this book...a lot I didn't know already, I mean.
The view from 2017 back to 1933, when this book first appeared, feels like a greater gap than the one between 1933 and 1830s Georgia. That's silly, I suppose, since what Miller wrote was genuinely historical fiction, recreating in her imagination the ideas and feelings of people who never had any kind of break, never got any credit for their labor, never spoke in chorus the way the rich and powerful always have. I, we I would argue, need to read these voices. They left no imprint on the psyche of the nation, before or after the first US Civil War, being merely pawns in the games played higher up. Their fatalism is perfectly logical. They were largely christian folk and were accustomed to the idea of blessings or blastings emanating from Above sans explanation or merit. What sustained them? Miller, from her century's remove, thought it was:
Just gorgeous, also exactly right, pitch perfect, and mercy on us all such a relief from the excessive flagellation poor, starchy, unbending Cean receives from This Our Life.
I must say that the losses Cean endures through the War are enough to convince me that, had I to suffer them, would've made me much more receptive to the "charms" of religion. Nothing, however, on this wide green earth could make me receptive to New Light Preacher O'Connor's charms. What a tedious prig. I felt that half-star slipping the second I met him. It fell off for good at the end, which felt more like something academics would discover among her papers and label "Notes Towards an Ending" in the Norton Critical Edition.
But the prose, the world, the sheer not-Gone with the Wind-ness of it, are reason enough to read it, and I feel confident in saying that you should.
What a read, what a ride, what a life I led reading Cean's tribulations. What a miserable thing it is to be a woman, apparently, and how hard it is to love another! Forget the hell out of children.
The little unknown thing was growing within her as suddenly and softly as the first touch of spring on the maples. It was putting out its hidden, watery roots as simply and surely as little cypresses take root in a stretch of swamp water away off yonder. It was coming upon her as quietly as the dark came up from the woods at night and hushed in the little clearing, closing every chink of every shutter tight with nothing. Impulses swelled within her, swelled her body fit to burst; yet they did not come out in words, nor song, nor in any sign.
Only to lose them as soon as you writhe, scream, push, expel them. My gawd, the only comfort is Gawd.
But in spite of all that, Caroline Miller is a storyteller and I kept going although I don't believe in gawd, ain't straight, and have always had money. Why? Because this is why I read: to discover. I discovered a lot reading this book...a lot I didn't know already, I mean.
The view from 2017 back to 1933, when this book first appeared, feels like a greater gap than the one between 1933 and 1830s Georgia. That's silly, I suppose, since what Miller wrote was genuinely historical fiction, recreating in her imagination the ideas and feelings of people who never had any kind of break, never got any credit for their labor, never spoke in chorus the way the rich and powerful always have. I, we I would argue, need to read these voices. They left no imprint on the psyche of the nation, before or after the first US Civil War, being merely pawns in the games played higher up. Their fatalism is perfectly logical. They were largely christian folk and were accustomed to the idea of blessings or blastings emanating from Above sans explanation or merit. What sustained them? Miller, from her century's remove, thought it was:
All these things buried about her house added to it, somehow; the yard was lived in now, like the house, each bush had something added to it, other than enrichment of the soil, for, together with its history of planting and rain and sun and dark, each bush now had, close by its seeking root, flesh that had grunted or peeped or squeaked while it lived. It gave Cean satisfaction to know about it.
Just gorgeous, also exactly right, pitch perfect, and mercy on us all such a relief from the excessive flagellation poor, starchy, unbending Cean receives from This Our Life.
I must say that the losses Cean endures through the War are enough to convince me that, had I to suffer them, would've made me much more receptive to the "charms" of religion. Nothing, however, on this wide green earth could make me receptive to New Light Preacher O'Connor's charms. What a tedious prig. I felt that half-star slipping the second I met him. It fell off for good at the end, which felt more like something academics would discover among her papers and label "Notes Towards an Ending" in the Norton Critical Edition.
But the prose, the world, the sheer not-Gone with the Wind-ness of it, are reason enough to read it, and I feel confident in saying that you should.
October 16, 2022
This isn't any novel, it's a cultural masterpiece. In a world where thrills are cheap, or as Bukowski puts it ''a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes'', this book is humbling.
A timeless classic.
My review is this. Turn off your TV, turn off your phone. Read this book and then go for a walk and look for whatever wildflowers are in season.
A timeless classic.
My review is this. Turn off your TV, turn off your phone. Read this book and then go for a walk and look for whatever wildflowers are in season.
February 5, 2016
Lamb in His Bosom is Caroline Miller’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel centered on poor farmers in the pre-Civil War South. My reaction to this novel was visceral. I am proud to say that my own heritage is rooted in just such rural people and that I could indeed see traces of my own great-uncles, grandmother and grandfather in the characters of the hard-working men and women portrayed here. It is, however, the women who capture my heart and make this novel sing personal songs to me. Cean, her mother Seen, and Margot who leaves a physically easier but morally deficient life to join them in the wilderness that borders the Okefenokee swamp, are the ones who make endurance and joy possible, bring life into being, nurture the living and prepare the dead for burial.
I could not help thinking of my own grandmother who bore eleven children and buried three of them either at birth or within a year of it. I can remember how hard-scrabble her life was, even when I was young and it must have seemed so much easier and “convenient” to her. Miller’s descriptions are vivid and detailed, so that it is easy to imagine these people at the hard labor of butchering, plowing, milking, cooking, sewing, and living. She pulls us into a world where birth and death are intimately linked and life is either a blessing or a curse depending on how capricious you believe God to be. It is also easy to find in the pages and characters the love and pleasures that are drawn from the simplest of things.
The religious element in these lives is what essentially propels them forward during the unbelievable hardships they must bear. The promise of another world that is less cruel and in which they can meet again with those they have lost energizes and motivates them to live.
“Seen would throw that promise back into God’s eternal face in the weak song of her lips. He had promised and repromised to bear her like a lamb in His bosom, never, no, never, no, never to forsake her.” One might ask where God is during all the horrors that visit these people, but one would be better to ask how they would ever have endured their lives without the promise that He was there and providing for them as they left this world for the next.
What stuck me deeply was the difference between our lives and theirs. How removed we are from everything around us compared to the way they lived within their world and part of it. Nature is their intimate provider and their constant threat. Rattlesnakes and panthers assault them, but blooming flowers enthrall them and the creatures of the woods feed them. When death comes, it is a presence. They sit with the dead, they touch them, they clean them, they dig the graves and lower the coffins. They do not assign their care to a hospice or call for a mortician.
Finally, there is the theme of home and family that runs through this story beginning to end. Seen and Vince leave Carolina to settle in Georgia because of the promise of a longer growing season and an easier life. They do not find that, but what they do find is a separation that is almost unbearable from the family and world they have left behind. Lias longs to leave this place of his birth, but in the end it is always homeward he looks. He wants those at home to always be looking for him to come and never to know of his death, because he wants never to be forgotten. In his own way, he proves the wisdom of his wish, for he is himself carrying alive in his heart the souls of those who have already passed from the earth in his absence. Cean mourns Cal’s death in the war more cruelly because he is so far from home when he meets his end. “But mayhap somebody dug a hole for him to rest in, away from their (buzzards) greedy beaks. Never did she know, and it was a sorrow to her; death is bad enough at its best, when ye can bury a body and lovingly tend the earth that lies above it…”.
Miller has a wonderful grasp of the people she portrays and uses their language with the loving touch of one who has heard these words tripping from the tongues of real people. She says she mined these stories over time from elderly people she knew, and it is obvious to me that a current of reality runs through her writing that cannot be denied. I am amazed that I had never come across this novel nor heard of it, despite its having won the 1934 Pulitzer and having inspired Margaret Mitchell’s writing of Gone With the Wind. I am grateful to the Goodreads member who suggested it as a group read and thus brought it to my attention.
I could not help thinking of my own grandmother who bore eleven children and buried three of them either at birth or within a year of it. I can remember how hard-scrabble her life was, even when I was young and it must have seemed so much easier and “convenient” to her. Miller’s descriptions are vivid and detailed, so that it is easy to imagine these people at the hard labor of butchering, plowing, milking, cooking, sewing, and living. She pulls us into a world where birth and death are intimately linked and life is either a blessing or a curse depending on how capricious you believe God to be. It is also easy to find in the pages and characters the love and pleasures that are drawn from the simplest of things.
The religious element in these lives is what essentially propels them forward during the unbelievable hardships they must bear. The promise of another world that is less cruel and in which they can meet again with those they have lost energizes and motivates them to live.
“Seen would throw that promise back into God’s eternal face in the weak song of her lips. He had promised and repromised to bear her like a lamb in His bosom, never, no, never, no, never to forsake her.” One might ask where God is during all the horrors that visit these people, but one would be better to ask how they would ever have endured their lives without the promise that He was there and providing for them as they left this world for the next.
What stuck me deeply was the difference between our lives and theirs. How removed we are from everything around us compared to the way they lived within their world and part of it. Nature is their intimate provider and their constant threat. Rattlesnakes and panthers assault them, but blooming flowers enthrall them and the creatures of the woods feed them. When death comes, it is a presence. They sit with the dead, they touch them, they clean them, they dig the graves and lower the coffins. They do not assign their care to a hospice or call for a mortician.
Finally, there is the theme of home and family that runs through this story beginning to end. Seen and Vince leave Carolina to settle in Georgia because of the promise of a longer growing season and an easier life. They do not find that, but what they do find is a separation that is almost unbearable from the family and world they have left behind. Lias longs to leave this place of his birth, but in the end it is always homeward he looks. He wants those at home to always be looking for him to come and never to know of his death, because he wants never to be forgotten. In his own way, he proves the wisdom of his wish, for he is himself carrying alive in his heart the souls of those who have already passed from the earth in his absence. Cean mourns Cal’s death in the war more cruelly because he is so far from home when he meets his end. “But mayhap somebody dug a hole for him to rest in, away from their (buzzards) greedy beaks. Never did she know, and it was a sorrow to her; death is bad enough at its best, when ye can bury a body and lovingly tend the earth that lies above it…”.
Miller has a wonderful grasp of the people she portrays and uses their language with the loving touch of one who has heard these words tripping from the tongues of real people. She says she mined these stories over time from elderly people she knew, and it is obvious to me that a current of reality runs through her writing that cannot be denied. I am amazed that I had never come across this novel nor heard of it, despite its having won the 1934 Pulitzer and having inspired Margaret Mitchell’s writing of Gone With the Wind. I am grateful to the Goodreads member who suggested it as a group read and thus brought it to my attention.
November 28, 2020
“The moon has all power; it even governs women’s ways, and who can explain that?”
This is a beautiful but grueling book. It’s the story of an extended family of settlers in Georgia, around the time of the Civil War, trying to eke out a living on the land, with nothing much between themselves and the harshness of nature except what they and their families had learned the hard way.
It opens with Cean and Lonzo taking off in their wagon to begin their marriage. Lonzo is a gentle and caring man, but relationships in this time and place weren’t necessarily full of the love and comfort we hope for in our families today. They were fraught. Everything was fraught--for the men and for the women--and this book tells us a little of particularly what the women went through.
It’s a bleak read, to be honest. So I was happy to notice an unusual reference that popped up in the narrative now and then: the mention of a crepe myrtle.
It just so happened that I was reading this book in the late autumn, as my own crepe myrtle was slowly shedding its rusting blossoms while its leaves, in their so many gorgeous shades of orange, clung on strong in the breeze. I love this amazing bush, the way it transforms with each season, from the barren sticks it’s going to be soon to green and copper leaves in spring to the deep pink, frail blossoms of summer.
As I read, the book and the bush seemed to be saying to me that there is a time for every season under heaven. Even now, with progress and conveniences, there are still seasons of difficulty. But I’m very grateful to my ancestors who, like Cean and Lonzo, struggled so hard to wrestle out a life so that I could come along and have an easier time of it. This story reminded me of what I have, and I thank them.
“…she kept thinking that breaths were like threads on a mighty loom, drawn tight, woven among one another, broken singly as each life reaches its frayed or short-cut ending.”
This is a beautiful but grueling book. It’s the story of an extended family of settlers in Georgia, around the time of the Civil War, trying to eke out a living on the land, with nothing much between themselves and the harshness of nature except what they and their families had learned the hard way.
It opens with Cean and Lonzo taking off in their wagon to begin their marriage. Lonzo is a gentle and caring man, but relationships in this time and place weren’t necessarily full of the love and comfort we hope for in our families today. They were fraught. Everything was fraught--for the men and for the women--and this book tells us a little of particularly what the women went through.
It’s a bleak read, to be honest. So I was happy to notice an unusual reference that popped up in the narrative now and then: the mention of a crepe myrtle.
It just so happened that I was reading this book in the late autumn, as my own crepe myrtle was slowly shedding its rusting blossoms while its leaves, in their so many gorgeous shades of orange, clung on strong in the breeze. I love this amazing bush, the way it transforms with each season, from the barren sticks it’s going to be soon to green and copper leaves in spring to the deep pink, frail blossoms of summer.
As I read, the book and the bush seemed to be saying to me that there is a time for every season under heaven. Even now, with progress and conveniences, there are still seasons of difficulty. But I’m very grateful to my ancestors who, like Cean and Lonzo, struggled so hard to wrestle out a life so that I could come along and have an easier time of it. This story reminded me of what I have, and I thank them.
“…she kept thinking that breaths were like threads on a mighty loom, drawn tight, woven among one another, broken singly as each life reaches its frayed or short-cut ending.”
September 30, 2017
Cean Carver weds Lonzo Smith on a fine Spring day in 1832, and they leave her parents’ home for the six-mile journey by ox cart to their new homestead. This 1934 Pulitzer winner deals with a backwoods country existence in rural Georgia, following the Carver / Smith families until shortly after the Civil War. Over the course of several decades, the book explores what life was like for these farmers of pre-Civil War America. They battle weather, wild animals, disease, and injuries. And, when called, the men leave to fight a war they never wanted, and have no stake in.
It takes a little while to get used to the language and style, but it’s a wonderful book. At times it’s plodding, but there are extraordinary moments of brilliant writing. Descriptions so vivid you can feel the heat, smell the blood, hear the birds or the wail of panthers. It is a simple story, of simple people, but their lives are anything but simple.
Cean Carver Smith is the focus of much of the novel. Over the course of the book she gives birth to fourteen children, mourns the death of several of her family members, endures moments of panic, and perseveres with courage and dignity. She is steadfast in her resolve to provide for her family, to love her husband and parents, and to endure.
What is so special about the book is that it gives voice to the majority of rural farmers of this era. People with limited education, no slaves, many children, and a deep faith that hard work would reap rewards. Miller was the first Georgia writer to win the Pulitzer, and the success of this novel prompted the publisher to go seeking other Southern writers. Thus, was Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind discovered. That book quickly surpassed this one in popularity, and more’s the pity in my opinion.
(NOTE: Review updated on second reading, Sept 2017)
It takes a little while to get used to the language and style, but it’s a wonderful book. At times it’s plodding, but there are extraordinary moments of brilliant writing. Descriptions so vivid you can feel the heat, smell the blood, hear the birds or the wail of panthers. It is a simple story, of simple people, but their lives are anything but simple.
Cean Carver Smith is the focus of much of the novel. Over the course of the book she gives birth to fourteen children, mourns the death of several of her family members, endures moments of panic, and perseveres with courage and dignity. She is steadfast in her resolve to provide for her family, to love her husband and parents, and to endure.
What is so special about the book is that it gives voice to the majority of rural farmers of this era. People with limited education, no slaves, many children, and a deep faith that hard work would reap rewards. Miller was the first Georgia writer to win the Pulitzer, and the success of this novel prompted the publisher to go seeking other Southern writers. Thus, was Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind discovered. That book quickly surpassed this one in popularity, and more’s the pity in my opinion.
(NOTE: Review updated on second reading, Sept 2017)
June 7, 2025
*4.5 Stars, rounded up
This gem of a novel contrasts nicely with Gone with the Wind, in that they both portray the Old South, during the years leading up to and during the War Between the States. However, Lamb in His Bosom centers around the poor settlers of this time and their daily struggle to tame the sparsely populated backwoods of southern Georgia. These pioneers were too overworked to be concerned about any kind of war, especially one concerning slaves, as most of them had never laid eyes on a slave, much less owned one.
Caroline Miller evokes a strong sense of time and place with her beautiful prose. I found myself reading some of the passages multiple times. There was a feeling of familiarity for me as I was born and raised in North Florida, The Yearling territory, to be precise, and I felt a keen sense of connection to the land in both novels.
*I deducted a half of a star because I felt the last few chapters were not as fleshed out as the previous chapters.
This gem of a novel contrasts nicely with Gone with the Wind, in that they both portray the Old South, during the years leading up to and during the War Between the States. However, Lamb in His Bosom centers around the poor settlers of this time and their daily struggle to tame the sparsely populated backwoods of southern Georgia. These pioneers were too overworked to be concerned about any kind of war, especially one concerning slaves, as most of them had never laid eyes on a slave, much less owned one.
Caroline Miller evokes a strong sense of time and place with her beautiful prose. I found myself reading some of the passages multiple times. There was a feeling of familiarity for me as I was born and raised in North Florida, The Yearling territory, to be precise, and I felt a keen sense of connection to the land in both novels.
*I deducted a half of a star because I felt the last few chapters were not as fleshed out as the previous chapters.
September 23, 2017
A Lamb in His Bosom: Caroline Miller's Antebellum South
I was enthralled by Miller's portrayal of the strength of the yeoman farmer class in the wiregrass and piney woods of antebellum Georgia. The pace of life was dictated by the seasons. Whether crops would flourish or wither depended on the unpredictable vagaries of the weather. The harvest would yield a bumper crop or yield so little that starvation stared families in the faces. Death was a predictable misery. Disease, accident, all deadly. Miller depicts her characters facing their losses with a resigned acceptance. The atmosphere of Miller's novel is one of unrelenting tension that can leave the reader drained. Miller's growing description of the distinction between the farmer class and the coastal traders deftly foreshadow the establishment of the planter class. As the decades pass, Miller accelerates and compresses the coming and passing of the American Civil War. The ending seems a rush to bring the novel to a close. I found Miller's development of strong and independent women to produce a work appropriately considered an early of feminist literature. I consider Lamb in His Bosom to be very deserving of its 1934 Pulitzer Prize. While I Recognize Gone with the Wind a beloved work of literature, Caroline Miller wrote a novel more realistically portraying a truer world of the South and its people. Remarkably memorable. Highly recommended.
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I was enthralled by Miller's portrayal of the strength of the yeoman farmer class in the wiregrass and piney woods of antebellum Georgia. The pace of life was dictated by the seasons. Whether crops would flourish or wither depended on the unpredictable vagaries of the weather. The harvest would yield a bumper crop or yield so little that starvation stared families in the faces. Death was a predictable misery. Disease, accident, all deadly. Miller depicts her characters facing their losses with a resigned acceptance. The atmosphere of Miller's novel is one of unrelenting tension that can leave the reader drained. Miller's growing description of the distinction between the farmer class and the coastal traders deftly foreshadow the establishment of the planter class. As the decades pass, Miller accelerates and compresses the coming and passing of the American Civil War. The ending seems a rush to bring the novel to a close. I found Miller's development of strong and independent women to produce a work appropriately considered an early of feminist literature. I consider Lamb in His Bosom to be very deserving of its 1934 Pulitzer Prize. While I Recognize Gone with the Wind a beloved work of literature, Caroline Miller wrote a novel more realistically portraying a truer world of the South and its people. Remarkably memorable. Highly recommended.
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September 15, 2017
This winner of the Pulitzer Prize the year before Gone With The Wind is the life story of Cean and Lonzo who newly married set out to build their lives in the backwoods of Georgia. A simply told story ( including terms like howsomever) of the self reliance required in a time when the daily chores of life such as growing crops and raising 14 children made you very old before age 40. 4 stars Sept OTSLT
February 23, 2022
Lamb in His Bosom is the story of the Carver family and in particular, the women of the Carver family—Seen, Cean and Margot. Set in rural Georgia in the years leading up to the Civil War, you get the initial impression that the women are subservient and considered inferior to their men. The other first impression is that this story was beginning at a time and place where survival was no longer as questionable as it was in the earliest settler days. Lonzo and Cean are just married, moving into a brand-new home. Cean’s family is just six miles away. Both Lonzo’s and Cean’s families are willing to provide them with as much as possible to help them get started in life. While not completely inaccurate, these first impressions quickly morph as the story unfolds.
While the women are subservient to their men, they are also stronger than their men, and in their hearts, they know it:
And for these poor white families, very distinct and different from the landed aristocracy of the South, survival is still very much in question, especially for a young family. Lamb in His Bosom has been described as the most accurate description available of how poor, white subsistence-farming families in this area lived. Caroline Miller does not paint a rosy picture. Supposedly the success of Lamb in His Bosom created the appetite in the publishing world that led to Gone with the Wind, but other than the success that both achieved, there are no other similarities between the two. Lamb in His Bosom describes a harsh existence.
Caroline Miller also attempts in Lamb in His Bosom to accurately reflect the vernacular of the region and time. The dialogue in the novel has a rhythm and consistency that rings true. There were a few “words” I puzzled over and of course, found no help from Google or any dictionary I had handy. The dialogue is complemented by Miller’s prose. Early in the novel I thought some of the description wordy, but it did not take long for me to change that opinion and see it as some of the most elegant and expressive I have read.
The only support system that anyone in this area of Georgia had was the families around them. There were no doctors, only those women who had developed a knowledge of herbal remedies. God was very real to these people and prayer gave them the strength they often needed to make it through the normal days and tragedies. Superstition, as well, played an important part in their lives, with the moon having many powers that guided the settlers’ actions and informed them in advance of certain outcomes. Education was what was passed along from parents to children. Women were often worn out by age 30 from childbearing and unending physical labor. These families owned no slaves, but at times envied the plantation owners and coastal whites who did. The cost made slaves unfeasible for them, but they would dream sometimes of how slaves could change their lives. There was no energy or thought given to the morality of slavery or obligation felt to help eliminate slavery. Men from these families fought in the Civil War because they were conscripted or because they were young, and the idea of such fighting excited them.
Despite this difficult life, there was love, pride, honor, respect and comradeship. Seen, Cean and Margot rely on one another, are always there for each other and find strength in each another. I know the sexism and racism in this novel can be difficult to handle, but I believe that one of the real values that historical fiction can provide is to accurately reflect the morals and cultural norms of a specific time and place—a time and place we can no longer visit and experience firsthand. Caroline Miller has created a world that feels real and honest to a time and place. Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934. Strongly recommended.
While the women are subservient to their men, they are also stronger than their men, and in their hearts, they know it:
Cean’s father ruled his house as he ruled his oxen; he gave commands and they were obeyed. His wife obeyed him as his children did...
Lonzo would need boys to help break ground and pull fodder; girls were good for but little, except to weave and pick cotton.
Now that it was over, it wasn’t so bad. She was glad that she had not let on to Lonzo how she felt; a woman has business to be as strong as a man. No, a woman has to be stronger than a man.
And for these poor white families, very distinct and different from the landed aristocracy of the South, survival is still very much in question, especially for a young family. Lamb in His Bosom has been described as the most accurate description available of how poor, white subsistence-farming families in this area lived. Caroline Miller does not paint a rosy picture. Supposedly the success of Lamb in His Bosom created the appetite in the publishing world that led to Gone with the Wind, but other than the success that both achieved, there are no other similarities between the two. Lamb in His Bosom describes a harsh existence.
Caroline Miller also attempts in Lamb in His Bosom to accurately reflect the vernacular of the region and time. The dialogue in the novel has a rhythm and consistency that rings true. There were a few “words” I puzzled over and of course, found no help from Google or any dictionary I had handy. The dialogue is complemented by Miller’s prose. Early in the novel I thought some of the description wordy, but it did not take long for me to change that opinion and see it as some of the most elegant and expressive I have read.
The leaves of the trees were blotched fever red and jaundice yellow as they died and loosed fragile holds on limbs that had given them sap through a length of days, and then inexplicably denied it.
One could not hear the dark now; there was only silence with the wind howling through it.
The only support system that anyone in this area of Georgia had was the families around them. There were no doctors, only those women who had developed a knowledge of herbal remedies. God was very real to these people and prayer gave them the strength they often needed to make it through the normal days and tragedies. Superstition, as well, played an important part in their lives, with the moon having many powers that guided the settlers’ actions and informed them in advance of certain outcomes. Education was what was passed along from parents to children. Women were often worn out by age 30 from childbearing and unending physical labor. These families owned no slaves, but at times envied the plantation owners and coastal whites who did. The cost made slaves unfeasible for them, but they would dream sometimes of how slaves could change their lives. There was no energy or thought given to the morality of slavery or obligation felt to help eliminate slavery. Men from these families fought in the Civil War because they were conscripted or because they were young, and the idea of such fighting excited them.
Despite this difficult life, there was love, pride, honor, respect and comradeship. Seen, Cean and Margot rely on one another, are always there for each other and find strength in each another. I know the sexism and racism in this novel can be difficult to handle, but I believe that one of the real values that historical fiction can provide is to accurately reflect the morals and cultural norms of a specific time and place—a time and place we can no longer visit and experience firsthand. Caroline Miller has created a world that feels real and honest to a time and place. Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934. Strongly recommended.
February 16, 2024
Stooping, her legs girdled about by blossoming pea vines and spidery grasses, she would move slowly forward among the faint odors of growing things and the voices of a thousand insects that made a home of this yellowing wilderness of hay. The sun would move toward its setting as she gathered tomorrow’s dinner; the shadows would lengthen toward the east; the air would be a murmurous, hot haze, and the field a wide, clean space engulfing this small, brown woman finding food for her man’s brawn and her children’s growth. Now and then she would lift her head to look upon the sullen black swamp, or to watch a bumblebee that clung to a swaying pea-vine tendril, its lumbering black body seeming immense and heavy on the delicate curl of vine. Above her bent the white sky, shading to faint blue; clouds reflected the sunlight, dazzling the eye; the dome of earth arched blindly over color and light, holding them under its heat until the summer world was thick with thundery oppression.
What else but a wonderfully crafted and beautifully sensitive piece of prose could demonstrate why this novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934? I was caught up by so many of these renderings throughout but the visual here is so breathtaking.
This describes Cean Carver Smith during a time of frontier living about twenty years before the Civil War. She and her husband Lonzo forge a way of life in the piney woods of south Georgia making their way through hardship after hardship. Caroline Miller draws a portrait of the struggles of a poor but hard-working farming family. We see the intensive laboring of the land from planting to harvest and the misfortunes that often come from mother nature or man’s mistakes. So much had to be endured during their lifetime: drought, sickness, panther attacks, rattlesnake bites, deaths of children and other family members, birthing babes alone, houses burning down.
Through it all, however, we see the faith and steadfastness of a family who must hold onto that which will sustain them from one affliction to the next. Cean’s mother, Seen Carver, has instilled in her children the hardscrabble ways that the pioneer folk cling to to survive. Cean’s constant remembrances of her mother’s words were evidence of the value and respect of family and keeping to the known ways. Margot marries Cean’s good-for-nothing brother, Lias. She is a city-bred woman from the Coast who must adapt to the backwoods ways. All of these women experience tribulations that cost each of them dearly.
Cean’s heart fell; a parting is sadder than a death, Ma always said, for two people are dead to one another and yet go on living – as though you might cleave a body in twain and set the severed halves apart and leave them to bleed helplessly for one another. A parting breaks the sacredest vow that any woman or man can make, “…till death us do part, so help me Godalmighty.”
This is a novel to experience and to become immersed. The prose is lovely and lyrical, emotional and touching. This is a brutal life full of tension and unease. The path that this extended family takes is one that I’d never be able to fully survive. It is a different world altogether from the one I know. However, I am grateful for the way that was paved by those who came before me and made the ways of life so much easier today.
For a heart may be lifted up and cast down in the same moment, as sometimes sunshine comes while rain is falling, and builds upward in the sky tall reaches of misty, unlikely beauty.
What else but a wonderfully crafted and beautifully sensitive piece of prose could demonstrate why this novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934? I was caught up by so many of these renderings throughout but the visual here is so breathtaking.
This describes Cean Carver Smith during a time of frontier living about twenty years before the Civil War. She and her husband Lonzo forge a way of life in the piney woods of south Georgia making their way through hardship after hardship. Caroline Miller draws a portrait of the struggles of a poor but hard-working farming family. We see the intensive laboring of the land from planting to harvest and the misfortunes that often come from mother nature or man’s mistakes. So much had to be endured during their lifetime: drought, sickness, panther attacks, rattlesnake bites, deaths of children and other family members, birthing babes alone, houses burning down.
Through it all, however, we see the faith and steadfastness of a family who must hold onto that which will sustain them from one affliction to the next. Cean’s mother, Seen Carver, has instilled in her children the hardscrabble ways that the pioneer folk cling to to survive. Cean’s constant remembrances of her mother’s words were evidence of the value and respect of family and keeping to the known ways. Margot marries Cean’s good-for-nothing brother, Lias. She is a city-bred woman from the Coast who must adapt to the backwoods ways. All of these women experience tribulations that cost each of them dearly.
Cean’s heart fell; a parting is sadder than a death, Ma always said, for two people are dead to one another and yet go on living – as though you might cleave a body in twain and set the severed halves apart and leave them to bleed helplessly for one another. A parting breaks the sacredest vow that any woman or man can make, “…till death us do part, so help me Godalmighty.”
This is a novel to experience and to become immersed. The prose is lovely and lyrical, emotional and touching. This is a brutal life full of tension and unease. The path that this extended family takes is one that I’d never be able to fully survive. It is a different world altogether from the one I know. However, I am grateful for the way that was paved by those who came before me and made the ways of life so much easier today.
For a heart may be lifted up and cast down in the same moment, as sometimes sunshine comes while rain is falling, and builds upward in the sky tall reaches of misty, unlikely beauty.
August 18, 2017
An exceptional accounting of antebellum south Georgia pinywoods pioneers, exquisitely written. The title coming from a psalm/hymn "How Firm a Foundation" that was a favorite of Cean's mother - "when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn/Like lambs in My bosom they shall be born".
July 26, 2009
This book was a total surprise. The author was born and partly raised in my small southern Georgia hometown and was the first Pulitzer Prize winner from the southern U.S. She's the one who paved the way for Margaret Mitchell.
The book itself seems simple on the surface, but really goes much deeper, especially if you know south Georgia. For someone who grew up in the region, there's something uncannily familiar in the characters. Uncanny because the books is set in the pre-Civil War era, yet you can still easily see elements of that rough and scrabble pioneer spirit in so much of Georgia now.
The story is an elegiac epic centering around one extended family and their various struggles to survive, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Maybe not for everyone, there's not a lot of historical reference, not much action, but the characters are true, living people and the writing is lyrical and lovely.
The book itself seems simple on the surface, but really goes much deeper, especially if you know south Georgia. For someone who grew up in the region, there's something uncannily familiar in the characters. Uncanny because the books is set in the pre-Civil War era, yet you can still easily see elements of that rough and scrabble pioneer spirit in so much of Georgia now.
The story is an elegiac epic centering around one extended family and their various struggles to survive, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Maybe not for everyone, there's not a lot of historical reference, not much action, but the characters are true, living people and the writing is lyrical and lovely.
September 12, 2024
A Novel Of Georgia Pioneers
The Pulitzer Prize for fiction generally is awarded to novels that celebrate the diverse character or ideals of American life. In 1934, "Lamb in his Bosom", an unusual first novel by an unknown southern writer, Caroline Miller, received the Prize and became a best-seller. Miller (1903 -- 1992) continued to write through her life, but she never duplicated her initial success.
"Lamb in his Bosom" is a historical novel set in rural south Georgia from about 1840 to the end of the Civil War. The setting is rarely explored in history or in literature; Miller brings it to life. Pioneers from North Carolina and Kentucky migrated to this remote area, full of swamps and pine forests and established hardscrabble farms. The population was sparse and life was hard.
Miller's novel covers the lives of several generations of the pioneering farmers. Her primary character is a woman, Cean Smith, who at 15 marries an older man, Lonzo, and begins life with him in a cabin six miles from her family, the nearest neighbors. She helps Lonzo with the farm work, keeps the house, and over the marriage bears 13 children, 8 of which survive. The farm is self-sufficient, run entirely by husband and wife. There were no slaves in this part of Georgia, whose population consisted of small, yeoman farmers. Once each year Lonzo and other men travel 80 miles to the Georgia "Coast" to engage in barter. Miller threads Cean's story into the life of the community, particularly her parents and siblings. Her brother, Lias, marries a woman he meets on the coast, Margot, whom his family fears will be of questionable virtue. Problems in the marriage result instead from Lias' own wandering, violence, and unfaithfulness.
Miller recreates beautifully the dialect of the place and time. The speech patterns are worth preserving and draw the reader into the story while making for slow reading. Miller offers beautifully descriptive passages of the nature and wildness that formed the settlers' lot -- including the swamps, capricious weather, animals, and snakes. She also offers a convincing portrayal of the rigors of farm life, from planting to cutting wood, to travel, and, especially bearing and raising many children.
The book centers on the travails of life. During her first pregnancy, Cean is bitten by a rattlesnake and nearly dies. The pregnancies are always life-threatening. Many people die during the course of the book. Injuries from animals, momentary carelessness with an ax, and fire, for example, are rampant.
Miller shows the gradual development and growth of the region. As the Civil War approaches, the population increases, and more formalized religion and education come into the area. When her husband dies, Cean gradually develops a relationship with a New Light minister, Dermid O'Connor. The religious nature of the simple farm pioneers receives much emphasis in the book.
"Lamb in his Bosom" offers a realistic historical portrayal of a small, isolated area of rural America. The characters in the book have rude, harsh lives. Miller develops them with a great deal of sympathy and affection; she clearly considers these early Georgia pioneers as the salt of the earth and she effectively conveys her portrayals to the reader.
Miller's book had a considerable influence on Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind". There is little of the romantic in Miller's book and the characters and stories in the two novels are far apart. Miller's novel had been almost forgotten before it was reissued in this this 1990's edition with an afterward by literary scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. The book describes a specific place and moment of American time but it echoes something universal in American experience and in Americans' visions of themselves. The book deserved the Pulitzer Prize it received in 1934. Readers with an interest in the literature of the American South will enjoy getting to know this book.
Robin Friedman
The Pulitzer Prize for fiction generally is awarded to novels that celebrate the diverse character or ideals of American life. In 1934, "Lamb in his Bosom", an unusual first novel by an unknown southern writer, Caroline Miller, received the Prize and became a best-seller. Miller (1903 -- 1992) continued to write through her life, but she never duplicated her initial success.
"Lamb in his Bosom" is a historical novel set in rural south Georgia from about 1840 to the end of the Civil War. The setting is rarely explored in history or in literature; Miller brings it to life. Pioneers from North Carolina and Kentucky migrated to this remote area, full of swamps and pine forests and established hardscrabble farms. The population was sparse and life was hard.
Miller's novel covers the lives of several generations of the pioneering farmers. Her primary character is a woman, Cean Smith, who at 15 marries an older man, Lonzo, and begins life with him in a cabin six miles from her family, the nearest neighbors. She helps Lonzo with the farm work, keeps the house, and over the marriage bears 13 children, 8 of which survive. The farm is self-sufficient, run entirely by husband and wife. There were no slaves in this part of Georgia, whose population consisted of small, yeoman farmers. Once each year Lonzo and other men travel 80 miles to the Georgia "Coast" to engage in barter. Miller threads Cean's story into the life of the community, particularly her parents and siblings. Her brother, Lias, marries a woman he meets on the coast, Margot, whom his family fears will be of questionable virtue. Problems in the marriage result instead from Lias' own wandering, violence, and unfaithfulness.
Miller recreates beautifully the dialect of the place and time. The speech patterns are worth preserving and draw the reader into the story while making for slow reading. Miller offers beautifully descriptive passages of the nature and wildness that formed the settlers' lot -- including the swamps, capricious weather, animals, and snakes. She also offers a convincing portrayal of the rigors of farm life, from planting to cutting wood, to travel, and, especially bearing and raising many children.
The book centers on the travails of life. During her first pregnancy, Cean is bitten by a rattlesnake and nearly dies. The pregnancies are always life-threatening. Many people die during the course of the book. Injuries from animals, momentary carelessness with an ax, and fire, for example, are rampant.
Miller shows the gradual development and growth of the region. As the Civil War approaches, the population increases, and more formalized religion and education come into the area. When her husband dies, Cean gradually develops a relationship with a New Light minister, Dermid O'Connor. The religious nature of the simple farm pioneers receives much emphasis in the book.
"Lamb in his Bosom" offers a realistic historical portrayal of a small, isolated area of rural America. The characters in the book have rude, harsh lives. Miller develops them with a great deal of sympathy and affection; she clearly considers these early Georgia pioneers as the salt of the earth and she effectively conveys her portrayals to the reader.
Miller's book had a considerable influence on Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind". There is little of the romantic in Miller's book and the characters and stories in the two novels are far apart. Miller's novel had been almost forgotten before it was reissued in this this 1990's edition with an afterward by literary scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. The book describes a specific place and moment of American time but it echoes something universal in American experience and in Americans' visions of themselves. The book deserved the Pulitzer Prize it received in 1934. Readers with an interest in the literature of the American South will enjoy getting to know this book.
Robin Friedman
September 1, 2020
This is a quiet story of one family, one woman living in rural Georgia on a small family farm in the decades before the Civil War. The afterword affirmed that the life and dialect portrayed in this novel was strikingly accurate despite being written a century later. Without melodrama, Miller drew me into the joy and pain, the setbacks and successes, the love and tension of these hard-working people that learned to accept life as it came.,
abandoned
July 15, 2018I will come back to this one, some day. Perhaps.
I just didn't feel any magic, after 40 pages or so, and it's much too hot to be reading a song of the south that doesn't deliver from the get-go, when it's 40C in the shade!
My mind kept drifting towards Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, (which also won the Pulitzer) and how I fell into it like a cool drink of water; this one was merely tepid.
Like Cean in the novel, "I be thinkin' on it sum a'fore I set my min' to it agin."
I just didn't feel any magic, after 40 pages or so, and it's much too hot to be reading a song of the south that doesn't deliver from the get-go, when it's 40C in the shade!
My mind kept drifting towards Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, (which also won the Pulitzer) and how I fell into it like a cool drink of water; this one was merely tepid.
Like Cean in the novel, "I be thinkin' on it sum a'fore I set my min' to it agin."
November 28, 2017
For me it was difficult to read because of the dialect and so it was 4.5 stars. But I had to round it up for the grit in this couple and the precision to a time, place, and their cored priority of everyday. The minute to minute of what is "survival important and right to do" NOW. The telling of their tale in the real eyes of their own scopes of knowledge and belief. It's life before antibiotics and all of those warm and cozy modern features like 24 hour hot water ready in minutes and electric light to stay up all night if that's your choice. The days of a great numbers of births but possibly just a few adult children after all was of your elder age. In a day when elder age and ill health could be any time after 40. Or just about 40. And when most of your food didn't come from any market let alone in a condition ready to cook or prepare for eating.
In other words, it's about marriage and family in the rural backwoods Southern USA homestead of more than 150 years ago.
Nearly everything has changed since then; it has for most places on all continents altered immensely in the last 200 years. But this is one humongous reminder of how tough and resilient (AND unafraid of unknowns and words in general as opposed to dire possible actions) that human beings required as base form then. Initiative and purpose were not just desired qualities but essentials.
No plot or storyline here- others have said it better.
In other words, it's about marriage and family in the rural backwoods Southern USA homestead of more than 150 years ago.
Nearly everything has changed since then; it has for most places on all continents altered immensely in the last 200 years. But this is one humongous reminder of how tough and resilient (AND unafraid of unknowns and words in general as opposed to dire possible actions) that human beings required as base form then. Initiative and purpose were not just desired qualities but essentials.
No plot or storyline here- others have said it better.
October 12, 2021
An incredible and rare book. The authenticity of the characters and their world is what makes such a startling read, especially considering that the poor white southern antebellum story is one that - at least at the time of Caroline Miller's writing - lay largely undocumented. I was particularly interested to read in the afterword how she found her source material back in the 1930's, how she would travel with her children in tow, knocking on strangers' doors with the thin veil of asking for butter or eggs, just to get to speak to those with ties to the previous generations. The speech, thoughts, ideas, and general inner workings of the characters make the plight of Cean Smith/Carver/O'Connor viscerally affecting.
I can certainly appreciate the thinking behind New York Times' critic Louis Kronenberger's judging Lamb In His Bosom as "less notable as a novel than it is as a picture", but also think he missed the point. Plot heavy it is not - we often arrive at the facts after the event, which may disappoint some though I thought these decisions to cut much of the emotional drag was really pertinent to capturing the austerity of the times and, above all, brave. It may be more of a picture in the end, but I personally love these meandering stories that work their magic slowly. How else could we possibly feel like we have personally known a woman (Cean) through all the stages of her life in such a profound and delicately touching manner? A whole world is conjured up before our eyes and ears, in what is sometimes the most gorgeously poetic prose I've read.
Thank you to the Goodreads group 'On the Southern Literary Trail' for bringing this book to my attention. I would never have read it otherwise, and I'd be all the poorer for it.
I can certainly appreciate the thinking behind New York Times' critic Louis Kronenberger's judging Lamb In His Bosom as "less notable as a novel than it is as a picture", but also think he missed the point. Plot heavy it is not - we often arrive at the facts after the event, which may disappoint some though I thought these decisions to cut much of the emotional drag was really pertinent to capturing the austerity of the times and, above all, brave. It may be more of a picture in the end, but I personally love these meandering stories that work their magic slowly. How else could we possibly feel like we have personally known a woman (Cean) through all the stages of her life in such a profound and delicately touching manner? A whole world is conjured up before our eyes and ears, in what is sometimes the most gorgeously poetic prose I've read.
Thank you to the Goodreads group 'On the Southern Literary Trail' for bringing this book to my attention. I would never have read it otherwise, and I'd be all the poorer for it.
April 3, 2012
I read Lambs in His Bosom after visiting the Margaret Mitchell house in Atlanta and learning that this novel was her favorite book. Fascinated and curious as to what moved Margaret Mitchell, I bought the book right there, in the gift shop and read it right away. It is interesting to me that the author who romanticized the old south aristocracy was influenced by a book about the southern poor, whose lives were so remote that they hardly knew there was a war going on beyond the boundary of their land. People who scrapped for their own living, and then were asked to fight to preserve a way of life that they didn't share.
Caroline Miller does a great job transporting the reader into a world beyond Gone With the Wind. She was the first of many great southern women writers.......all of whom I intend to read!
Caroline Miller does a great job transporting the reader into a world beyond Gone With the Wind. She was the first of many great southern women writers.......all of whom I intend to read!
February 15, 2024
While showing the tremendous courage of a hard scrabble life in rural Georgia during the Civil War of most of the characters, Lias was one of the most idiotic characters ever. He falls in love with the first woman who says hi to him, fathers a bastard & sees another woman on the coast while knowing his other two women know all about his third women! He is on his death bed in California and cruelly pens a message that he will be coming home soon which is just to torture his family. The main character, Cean views on racism were also hard to stomach.
February 19, 2016
In 1934, Caroline Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for Lamb in His Bosom. She was the first Georgian to win this award, soon followed by Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. Both novelists explored the life of Georgians. However, Ms. Miller wrote about the poor farmers who did not own slaves and who labored from morning to night making a living.
This book was a realistic picture of the life of a farmer, Lonzo, and his wife, Cean, in the period before the Civil War and contrasts strongly to idealized propaganda written by Margaret Mitchell. I was most impressed with the hardship experienced by the women who endured pregnancy after pregnancy. The author describes postpartum depression accurately. She shows how each pregnancy weakens the mother. The swiftness of death of family members breaks the monotony of working on the farm day after day, month after month and year after year. The book ends when the Civil War is over, so there is no resolution to the problems Cean and her family will face after the war.
There were some sections and descriptions that were boring, so I ended up stopping for a while to read other books. However, most of the book was engrossing and I would recommend that everyone who has read Gone with the Wind read this book in order to get a "fair and balanced view" of life in Georgia.
This book was a realistic picture of the life of a farmer, Lonzo, and his wife, Cean, in the period before the Civil War and contrasts strongly to idealized propaganda written by Margaret Mitchell. I was most impressed with the hardship experienced by the women who endured pregnancy after pregnancy. The author describes postpartum depression accurately. She shows how each pregnancy weakens the mother. The swiftness of death of family members breaks the monotony of working on the farm day after day, month after month and year after year. The book ends when the Civil War is over, so there is no resolution to the problems Cean and her family will face after the war.
There were some sections and descriptions that were boring, so I ended up stopping for a while to read other books. However, most of the book was engrossing and I would recommend that everyone who has read Gone with the Wind read this book in order to get a "fair and balanced view" of life in Georgia.
September 21, 2021
Like with Scarlet Sister Mary, I was a bit nervous about the depiction of pre-Civil War south by a white writer. In this novel, it is primarily poor white settlers who are struggling to make ends meet while pumping out kids (Cean, the protagonist has fourteen, five of which do not survive infancy) in rural Georgia. It is a tragic tale with danger and sadness all the way through for Cean. There is not much sympathy for the plight of the slaves and later, after the Civil War, the ex-slaves shown by the author. It was more centered on the stubborn survival instinct of Cean than anything else.
The writing was OK, but not stellar. She won the 1934 Pulitzer, somewhat thanks to the encouragement and help from Julia Peterkins (author of the heretofore mentioned Scarlet Sister Mary) and looking back at 1933, it was a rather fallow year with the exception of the Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, so perhaps that explains the choice.
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):
The writing was OK, but not stellar. She won the 1934 Pulitzer, somewhat thanks to the encouragement and help from Julia Peterkins (author of the heretofore mentioned Scarlet Sister Mary) and looking back at 1933, it was a rather fallow year with the exception of the Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie, Lord Edgware Dies, so perhaps that explains the choice.
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):
August 4, 2009
In the 20-year history of our book club, one devoted to reading classics and Pulitzer and Nobel prize winning lit., we rarely have one that has brought as much acclaim as this book. Several of us had read the book and recommended it for years. The outdated title was off-putting to the other group members. They were all pleasantly astounded and still recommend it to any newcomers that attend our group with misty eyed fondness. Perhaps the title, which uses religious references that are not played out in a major way in the book, not to mention the archaic word "bosom," should be changed to make the book more assessable today. I am not sure what I would call it if I were in charge of the new title, other than "wonderful!"
November 25, 2008
My great-great aunt wrote this book and i have one of the first copies ever printed in 1933. i love the book because of all the work that she put into it just to write the story. Miller actually me with people and collected stories and wrote the book. it is very interesting from a historical and language aspect. read it!
January 29, 2016
1) Classic Bingo 2016-->O5 Prize Winning Female Author
2) Women's Lit Enthusiasts January 2016 BOTM
This amazing book won the Pulitzer in 1934 and richly and justly deserves to be more widely known.
2) Women's Lit Enthusiasts January 2016 BOTM
This amazing book won the Pulitzer in 1934 and richly and justly deserves to be more widely known.
February 14, 2024
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel whose success helped pave the way for the publication of Gone with the Wind. GWTW author Margaret Mitchell called it “my favorite book.”
While not my “favorite” book, it is a well-written enjoyable read that gives a realistic look at rural life in the early-mid 19th century Georgia backwoods. It tells the story of the family of Seen and Vince Carver, centering on the lives of their children Jaspar, Lias, Cean and Jake. In starts with the marriage of daughter Cean to neighbor Lonzo Smith in about 1840 and tracks the life of the Carvers and Smiths until the end of the Civil War.
Cean is the central character with the story, as the back blurb says, mainly about “the courageous Cean Smith as she bears witness to cycles of birth and death, marriage and betrayal.” Lias’ wife, Margot, is also a key female protagonist. The point of view comes from these female characters more than the males.
The story started slowly but picked up when Margot entered it. Then the events became more dramatic. All in all, there are joys and tragedies and the daily toil of life in the backwoods, all realistically portrayed. The writing is clear, descriptive, and easy to read, with Miller drawing evocative depictions of the area’s environment.
Despite some dramatic events, the book never becomes cloying or overly melodramatic in portraying the character’s emotional reactions. On the other hand, despite these dramatic events, I developed only a moderate attachment to the characters and their fate. This resulted in a book that for me was very good rather than great. It is a well written Pulitzer winner that I rate as 4 stars.
While not my “favorite” book, it is a well-written enjoyable read that gives a realistic look at rural life in the early-mid 19th century Georgia backwoods. It tells the story of the family of Seen and Vince Carver, centering on the lives of their children Jaspar, Lias, Cean and Jake. In starts with the marriage of daughter Cean to neighbor Lonzo Smith in about 1840 and tracks the life of the Carvers and Smiths until the end of the Civil War.
Cean is the central character with the story, as the back blurb says, mainly about “the courageous Cean Smith as she bears witness to cycles of birth and death, marriage and betrayal.” Lias’ wife, Margot, is also a key female protagonist. The point of view comes from these female characters more than the males.
The story started slowly but picked up when Margot entered it. Then the events became more dramatic. All in all, there are joys and tragedies and the daily toil of life in the backwoods, all realistically portrayed. The writing is clear, descriptive, and easy to read, with Miller drawing evocative depictions of the area’s environment.
Despite some dramatic events, the book never becomes cloying or overly melodramatic in portraying the character’s emotional reactions. On the other hand, despite these dramatic events, I developed only a moderate attachment to the characters and their fate. This resulted in a book that for me was very good rather than great. It is a well written Pulitzer winner that I rate as 4 stars.
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