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Come Spring
Book by Williams, Ben Ames
Paperback
First published December 12, 1968
42 people are currently reading
266 people want to read
About the author
Ben Ames Williams
114 books26 followersBen Ames Williams was born in Macon, Mississippi to Daniel Webster Williams and Sarah Marshall Ames on March 7, 1889. Just after his birth, he and his parents moved to Jackson, Ohio. Because his father was owner and editor of the Jackson Standard Journal in Ohio, Ben Williams grew up around writing, printing, and editing. In high school he worked for the Journal, doing grunt work in the beginning and eventually writing and editing. He attended Dartmouth College and upon graduation in 1910 was offered a job teaching English at a boy’s school in Connecticut. He telegraphed his father seeking career advice, but his handwriting was terrible and his father mistook “teaching” for “traveling” and, not wanting his son to become a traveling businessman, advised him not to take the job. Richard Cary says it later saved Williams from “a purgatory of grading endless, immature English ‘themes’” and propelled him “toward a career as one of the most popular storytellers of his time”. Right after graduation he took a job reporting for the Boston American.
Williams worked hard reporting for the local newspaper, but only did this for income; his heart lay with magazine fiction. Each night he worked on his fiction writing with the aspiration that one day, his stories would be able to support himself, his wife, Florence Talpey, and their children, Roger, Ben, and Penelope. He faced many rejection letters in the beginning of his career, which only drove him to study harder and practice more.
Williams was first published on August 23, 1915 in The Popular Magazine with his short story “Deep Stuff.” After that his popularity slowly grew. He published 135 short stories, 35 serials, and 7 articles for the Saturday Evening Post during a period of 24 years. After the Post took him, other magazines began eagerly seeking Williams to submit his fiction to their magazines.
Williams is perhaps most famous for creating the fictional town of Fraternity, located in rural Maine. 125 of his short stories were set in Fraternity, and they were most popular in the Post. Maine is also the setting for many of his novels.
Williams died of a heart attack in 1953.
Source: Wikipedia
Williams worked hard reporting for the local newspaper, but only did this for income; his heart lay with magazine fiction. Each night he worked on his fiction writing with the aspiration that one day, his stories would be able to support himself, his wife, Florence Talpey, and their children, Roger, Ben, and Penelope. He faced many rejection letters in the beginning of his career, which only drove him to study harder and practice more.
Williams was first published on August 23, 1915 in The Popular Magazine with his short story “Deep Stuff.” After that his popularity slowly grew. He published 135 short stories, 35 serials, and 7 articles for the Saturday Evening Post during a period of 24 years. After the Post took him, other magazines began eagerly seeking Williams to submit his fiction to their magazines.
Williams is perhaps most famous for creating the fictional town of Fraternity, located in rural Maine. 125 of his short stories were set in Fraternity, and they were most popular in the Post. Maine is also the setting for many of his novels.
Williams died of a heart attack in 1953.
Source: Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
December 8, 2012
I am a Robbins, from the Union, Maine Robbins. My father was Joseph and this book about our family was a must read in our home. It is amazing and pleasing that so many people still appreciate reading it today.
June 8, 2016
I have, in my lifetime of reading, been riveted by three epic tomes of historical fiction: In the early 70s, Taylor Caldwell’s A Testimony of Two Men; thirty later-Follett’s Pillars of the Earth; and over the past week and a half, Ben Ames Williams’s 1940 classic, Come Spring.
This 866 page story of Union, ME traces the journey of Philip Robbins and his family from Walpole, MA to the wilderness then known as the plantation of Sterlington in the District of Maine, from their 1776 arrival through the next eight years of settlement and growth.
The reader learns of the impact of the Revolutionary War:
Mima, the protagonist, expresses a special love for the land as she explores (usually barefoot!), and the reader is mesmerized by the descriptions of the unspoiled wilderness such as trees, that, when fallen, are so large they land breast-high. She notes that, again fast forward to 2016, maybe some day people will worry [that they don’t] have enough trees but that was not the case for them then.
While historical fiction, the characters and events of the book are indeed those of the first settlement, and the Union Historical Society has established a driving tour of its history. I know that the next time I am traveling up Maine's Mid-Coast, I will veer a tad west to step back into the world of the settlers of Sterlington.
This 866 page story of Union, ME traces the journey of Philip Robbins and his family from Walpole, MA to the wilderness then known as the plantation of Sterlington in the District of Maine, from their 1776 arrival through the next eight years of settlement and growth.
The reader learns of the impact of the Revolutionary War:
Mima, the protagonist, expresses a special love for the land as she explores (usually barefoot!), and the reader is mesmerized by the descriptions of the unspoiled wilderness such as trees, that, when fallen, are so large they land breast-high. She notes that, again fast forward to 2016, maybe some day people will worry [that they don’t] have enough trees but that was not the case for them then.
While historical fiction, the characters and events of the book are indeed those of the first settlement, and the Union Historical Society has established a driving tour of its history. I know that the next time I am traveling up Maine's Mid-Coast, I will veer a tad west to step back into the world of the settlers of Sterlington.
April 16, 2010
This book was originally published in the late 1930s or early '40s. My dad read it when he was about 12, and loved it. When I was 12, he recommended it to me...my first book from the "adult" section of the library! I loved it, even though I don't think I paid attention to the historical background. I've read it many times since, and the warmth and grit of these real characters still hits home.
October 11, 2019
This book was loaned to me by my friend Peggy, a " Mainer", growing up in Searsport, ME. This nearly 900 page book tells the story of the building of a rural town in the 1700's. Ultimately it becomes Union,ME. It was so intriguing to learn about pioneers in those early days of Maine life. It is historical fiction and the characters really did exist. I absolutely loved it...This was written in the 1950's and given to Peggy's Mom and then to Peggy by her maternal grandmother. Such a treasure!
March 19, 2018
I kind of just skimmed the last hundred pages. It would have been a better book if the author had condensed it a little more. 800 pages was too long for this type of writing.
September 29, 2018
This book isn’t for everyone, I consider it a beast of a book. But I’m a bit of a history buff and have visited some of the towns noted in the text. I love that it is tied back to actual families that lived in and helped settle the area. It gives the reader an appreciation of what the earlier settlers were up against.
July 28, 2013
Since my name is Mima I bet you can guess. I loved the book as it gives great insight to the trials and tribulations faced by these early settlers of Sterlington/Union Me. The details paint a fantastic picture of their homes and the surrounding area. I spent my summers as did my mother before me in Union. We stayed with our cousin Lily Mae and Maitland Alden in the Ebenezer Alden house on Route 17. As a little child I loved to explore the barn on the property with the eagle cast in Paul Revere's shop . We played in the upper deck and the lower run in for the sleighs and carriages.The house was beautiful and filled with beautiful antiques. The attic was full of fun and interesting things. There were bushels of letters from revolutionary war times and lots of old victorian dresses.The kitchen was a warm cozy place. It was my first experience with an "indoor Outhouse".. I remember being terrified that I would fall through to the nasty stuff..When my grandparents retired they moved to Union to be closer to my grandfathers sister Lily Mae. They built a home on Appleton rd across the street from carl and Maxine Heath on land they bought from Johnny Howard. We went haying with Johnny and attended the fair. We went to Lincolnville beach for seafood dinners and shopping with grandma in Camden. In the afternoons we loved going over to Steve and Laura Kirkpatricks dairy farm to get the milk and help with the milking. We had contests plucking chickens with their daughter Gail.
October 29, 2010
One of my favorite books of all time... Reread it every couple of years...
July 25, 2018
Loved this book! Wishing there was more to come. I will miss Mima and Joel and their daily life in Maine's early history.
March 31, 2022
As I understand it, this book hews pretty close to historical facts about colonizing the part of Maine that came to be incorporated as Union. Taking place in the last couple of decades of the 18th century, this historical fiction describes the Robbins family sailing up the St. George River and claiming land they had purchased on the side of Seven Tree Pond. Nearly all of the characters in the book depict real historical people, and major events come from historic accountings of the region. Always interested in history, I found this book compelling.
Nearly 900 pages long, the book took me forever to read. With many interruptions along the way, I had to keep setting the book aside and then picking it up again later. It is a credit to the writing that I didn't lose the thread despite my choppy consumption of the story. The book is well written, but I will say the book would have been much stronger had it been shortened.
The story is told mostly through the eyes of Mima, one of the Robbins daughters, and it depicts her coming of age and her loooong attraction, and then marriage, to Joel Adams. The tough work of creating homes and farms, surviving the harsh Maine winters, facing life-threatening circumstances when early frosts killed crops, and raising a steady stream of babies, babies, babies felt realistic to me. I must say, my heart absolutely broke at the descriptions of the people denuding the forests to create farms. Of course, I knew that was what the colonizers did as they took over land on the American continent, but having it described so vividly -- indiscriminate telling of trees, followed by huge fires to get rid of them -- really affected me. Native people have only a very minor place in this book. One wonders how things might have been different in America had the colonizers learned from native people how to live in harmony with the land instead of working so hard to push them off the land.
In all, if you like historical fiction, especially about that part of the world during that period of time, I would recommend this book.
Nearly 900 pages long, the book took me forever to read. With many interruptions along the way, I had to keep setting the book aside and then picking it up again later. It is a credit to the writing that I didn't lose the thread despite my choppy consumption of the story. The book is well written, but I will say the book would have been much stronger had it been shortened.
The story is told mostly through the eyes of Mima, one of the Robbins daughters, and it depicts her coming of age and her loooong attraction, and then marriage, to Joel Adams. The tough work of creating homes and farms, surviving the harsh Maine winters, facing life-threatening circumstances when early frosts killed crops, and raising a steady stream of babies, babies, babies felt realistic to me. I must say, my heart absolutely broke at the descriptions of the people denuding the forests to create farms. Of course, I knew that was what the colonizers did as they took over land on the American continent, but having it described so vividly -- indiscriminate telling of trees, followed by huge fires to get rid of them -- really affected me. Native people have only a very minor place in this book. One wonders how things might have been different in America had the colonizers learned from native people how to live in harmony with the land instead of working so hard to push them off the land.
In all, if you like historical fiction, especially about that part of the world during that period of time, I would recommend this book.
October 11, 2020
Birthday Book #76 from my friend Vickie. I read this one many years ago, at her recommendation, and while I remembered enjoying it, I had little memory of anything that actually went on in the book. It's really not super memorable, which isn't to say it isn't enjoyable. It's the story of a family that settled parts of Maine during the American Revolution. They build homes, start farms, get married, have children, experience trials, and so forth. Nothing earthshattering. Despite the fact that I know it took place 200+ years ago and despite the fact that I know it was written in the 1940's, I still had a little trouble adjusting to things that were "normal" then. The main character, Mima, whose only thought at 19 is finding a husband and yearning to have children. Calling a nursing mother a "fine heifer". Good grief. The odd corn shucking tradition of chasing a woman around and demanding a kiss when you found a red ear of corn. And "bundling" with a future prospective spouse. Still, though a bit overlong at ~800 pages, it was a good book.
April 28, 2024
This book ranks among my all-time favorites. I've read it several times and will likely read it again. The depiction of life during the pioneer days fascinates me. It's grounded in historical facts, real people, and their experiences. One can even research the main characters on Ancestry to discover more about them. Despite its length, I always feel a tinge of sadness when I reach the conclusion.
November 29, 2021
110% biased on this review -- but compelling for people who know this region of Maine
May 21, 2023
Great book. I read it about 30 years ago and had to read it again
September 2, 2024
Loved this book. Settled my soul in this chaotic time.
September 20, 2024
A great book to read if you're from Union, Maine
June 17, 2025
Whew - nearly 900 pages. Loved it but I think it’s a very specific reader who would appreciate it.
January 6, 2013
This is a regional classic first published in 1940. I read it back when we first moved to Maine in 1970 or 71 and always remembered it. Rereading it was a pleasure. The writing is not too dated and the story is timeless. Mima gets her man and keeps him - all set against the backdrop of the American revolution and the settlement of a frontier town in mid Maine, today called Union. I appreciate Ben Ames Williams' motivation to tell a historical tale about common everyday folk and in this I think he was ahead of his time. Now I live in this area and the novel took on a special meaning for me. I really liked the chapter when Joel and Mima went up the St George River to lake Quantabacook and thence to Frye Mountain. Very evocative. If you drive down to Union you cna find the graves of many of the characters in the old cemetery there.
August 16, 2022
Ben Ames Williams is a good writer. He captures atmosphere and character in a timeless way. I have enjoyed "The Strange Woman" and "Leave Her to Heaven" (which I am re-reading currently).
HOWEVER...I found myself repulsed by the overall concept here in this book, which is all about westward expansion and "conquering the land" by slaughtering it and having lots of babies. There are also some ignorant attitudes about indigenous people.
It seems most of the 5 star reviews are from people who live in the area he writes about in this book. For some reason, they overlook all the negatives that I find in it. It's a huge book, and it isn't worth it. I have to say, it brought my appreciation for Ben Ames Williams down a notch. Read ANYTHING else by him, and he redeems himself.
HOWEVER...I found myself repulsed by the overall concept here in this book, which is all about westward expansion and "conquering the land" by slaughtering it and having lots of babies. There are also some ignorant attitudes about indigenous people.
It seems most of the 5 star reviews are from people who live in the area he writes about in this book. For some reason, they overlook all the negatives that I find in it. It's a huge book, and it isn't worth it. I have to say, it brought my appreciation for Ben Ames Williams down a notch. Read ANYTHING else by him, and he redeems himself.
February 15, 2015
As a part time Mainer this book is a must, but it is story I think anyone would love. It's the story of the average people who worked to make lives for themselves and their children during the Revolutionary War. It is the same story told throughout this country. At times it was slow and somewhat dated. i became very tired of Mima forever talking about what women do and what men do. But, when Phillip Robbins reflects on what freedom means, the burden of it, it was beautiful. I loved that this was the everyday lives of real people. I'm looking forward to the Come Springs tour this July.
July 2, 2012
Wonderfully detailed book about the settling of early Maine towns during the American Revolution. The beauty of this book doesn't lie in page turning excitement and rollercoaster plot lines but rather the wonderful job Williams does conveying the grit and determination the early settlers displayed. At times it seemed a bit slow going but there was something relaxing about rejoining these well developed characters in their daily trials as well as seeing the enjoyment they found in simple pleasures.
June 4, 2013
Having grown up in the Maine woods, I was excited to read this book. While "slow" in the traditional sense, the beauty of this book is truly the day-to-day subtleties of a life that many could never imagine. I read this book several years ago, but I still have such a crystal-clear mental image of what the town looked like, how their houses were designed, and even the character's clothing. I'll admit - after reading this book, I went through a phase of wanting to live in a little cabin in the woods!
July 21, 2008
This book is from a Maine author and takes place in Maine - mostly in Union, Maine. The characters are real - the book includes a real map of the setting and an epilogue. I loved this book and have read it more than once. Every time I drive by Union, Maine, I remember the book and look out for 7 Tree Pond.
August 6, 2012
I read this over & over in high school. Little known, but found in our local library(I didn't steal this one though) : ) Books like this helped develop my love of history, or did I like it because I love history? Told history through the eyes of common people.
March 8, 2013
IF you live in Maine, Lived in Maine or grew up in the Lincoln county/ knox county area, you have to read this book regardless of the fact that there are parts that are someone boring. Read it, it is a great lesson and reminder on how Maine was developed!
November 19, 2024
My favorite book of all time. Rich in historical facts and family struggles as they develop a new town in Maine. We grew up learning that no matter how hard life might be families work together to get through because "come spring" things will always look brighter.
March 27, 2021
This novel was published in 1940 about the creation of a town in Maine in the 1770's. The syntax is somewhat awkward from today's standpoints, and some of the attitudes to Indigenous people would not be acceptable today, but otherwise the story is good; slow paced and thoughtful.
July 18, 2008
This is a story about the founding of Union, Maine. This is not a book I would normally read, but now I recommend it to everyone. You'll fall in love with it and then want to visit Union, Maine.
March 6, 2009
Excellent Book. I've read it a few times. It is a true story about the settling of Maine./ I would have not liked to be pregnant back in those days.
March 7, 2009
My favorite book
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews