What do you think?
Rate this book
The Awakening Land #1
The Trees
“They moved along in the bobbing, springy gait of a family that followed the woods as some families follow the sea.” In that first sentence Conrad Richter sets the mood of this magnificent epic of the American wilderness. Toward the close of the eighteenth century the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio river was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here the Lucketts, a wild, woodsfaring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation. Richter has written, not a historical novel, of which there are so many, but a novel of authentic early American life, of which there are so few. It is the primitive story of Worth Luckett, the hunter, and of Jary, his woman; of Genny, Wyitt, Achsa, and Sulie, their woods-wild children; of the bound boy and the Solitary and Jake Tench; but principally of the oldest girl, Sayward Luckett, whos people as far back as she knew had always been hunters and gunsmiths to hunters, but who, through the quiet, growing, and yet tragic oppression of the trees, turns her back at last on her life as a hunter’s child and becomes a tiller of the soil. This novel of great lyrical beauty and high excitement tells the story of the transition of American pioneers from the ways of the wilderness to the ways of civilization. Here is the true American epic. Here is the raw adventure, swift and cruel in its episodes; but here too is the poetry of loneliness. Here is a portrait of frontier life as it really must have seemed to the pioneers. Here in short is a masterpiece by the man who gave us The Sea of Grass.
180 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1940
210 people are currently reading
16382 people want to read
About the author
Conrad Richter
61 books146 followersConrad Michael Richter (October 13, 1890 – October 30, 1968) was an American novelist whose lyrical work is concerned largely with life on the American frontier in various periods. His novel The Town (1950), the last story of his trilogy The Awakening Land about the Ohio frontier, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[1] His novel The Waters of Kronos won the 1961 National Book Award for Fiction.[2] Two collections of short stories were published posthumously during the 20th century, and several of his novels have been reissued during the 21st century by academic presses. (wikipedia.org)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 490 reviews
June 27, 2022
The Trees is the first of a trilogy in Conrad Richter’s American saga, The Awakening Land: The Trees, The Fields, & The Town. Whenever I read about the settling of this country, I am taken with the strength of the people who forged ahead to unknown places and dangers, leaving all they knew behind them forever. Such a family are the Luckett’s, Worth, Jary, and their five children, who leave Pennsylvania for the uncharted forests of Ohio, and such a family stands behind all of us whose families founded the U.S. and Canada.
The main character followed through the book is the oldest daughter, Sayward, who is a monument to strong women everywhere. She is physically able and quick, but it is her mental endurance that left me awed. Even one of the tragedies she faces would be too much for many of us, but we know that only the strong survive and only the strongest build. For if Sayward is anything, she is a builder, a worker, and a woman who will leave more behind her than she finds.
I had no difficulty in relating to each of the characters in the book. The rugged loner, that is Sayward’s father, Worth; the reluctant mother who follows him into places she never wishes to go, the children who adapt to whatever environment they are thrown into, and the good and evil people that come to populate their world–all seem real. There are no stereotypes here, even though several of the characters could easily have become that.
There are, of course, nuggets of truth sprinkled among these pages. When Sayward is wishing to make some Moss Tea, her Mother’s recipe, she can only remember pieces of the procedure and she reflects, “What moss it was and what you did then was forever buried now under the big white oak.” Do you think we all die with things we know that nobody else ever will? I do. I wish there were a million things I had thought to ask my Mama when she was here with me, and my Daddy was a fountain of folklore and family stories that have disappeared except in snatches over the years. Like Sayward, we don’t often think of it until it is too late.
This novel reads easily and feels very authentic, as if Richter might have lived in those times himself. If I had a complaint it would be that it ends abruptly, but then that wouldn’t be a valid complaint because it is part of a trilogy and Sayward and all the others are just waiting for me to pick them up again in The Fields, which I am quite anxious to do.
The main character followed through the book is the oldest daughter, Sayward, who is a monument to strong women everywhere. She is physically able and quick, but it is her mental endurance that left me awed. Even one of the tragedies she faces would be too much for many of us, but we know that only the strong survive and only the strongest build. For if Sayward is anything, she is a builder, a worker, and a woman who will leave more behind her than she finds.
I had no difficulty in relating to each of the characters in the book. The rugged loner, that is Sayward’s father, Worth; the reluctant mother who follows him into places she never wishes to go, the children who adapt to whatever environment they are thrown into, and the good and evil people that come to populate their world–all seem real. There are no stereotypes here, even though several of the characters could easily have become that.
There are, of course, nuggets of truth sprinkled among these pages. When Sayward is wishing to make some Moss Tea, her Mother’s recipe, she can only remember pieces of the procedure and she reflects, “What moss it was and what you did then was forever buried now under the big white oak.” Do you think we all die with things we know that nobody else ever will? I do. I wish there were a million things I had thought to ask my Mama when she was here with me, and my Daddy was a fountain of folklore and family stories that have disappeared except in snatches over the years. Like Sayward, we don’t often think of it until it is too late.
This novel reads easily and feels very authentic, as if Richter might have lived in those times himself. If I had a complaint it would be that it ends abruptly, but then that wouldn’t be a valid complaint because it is part of a trilogy and Sayward and all the others are just waiting for me to pick them up again in The Fields, which I am quite anxious to do.
January 1, 2016
When a man gets it into his head to move west, there's not much a body can do to stop him. Even if it means dragging the whole, dirt-poor family from Pennsylvania to Ohio through woods so deep one can't see the sky till the trees release their cargo come winter. Such a place belongs to the wild creatures who roam, not families with young 'uns. But from now on his dank, black, mossy world will be called home, and it doesn't do any one a lick of good to look behind.
The story begins abruptly and the names are so unusual it took my mind a while to sort out who was who but once I did I couldn't put it down. I've read many Westward expansion books but this is the first one that let me envision the country that was, before the fields, when complete States were nothing but gigantic forests so monstrous one could get lost picking berries and never find the way home. The aloneness... I could feel it. Smell it. Taste it. Magical.
I have to tell you this is gritty. There is no graphic sex or anything like that, but it's a rough place. There's sickness, death, abandonment, and there is one horrifying scene of animal violence that was almost a deal breaker for me. I'm not saying don't read the book if you're an animal lover, but I will say that if you're sensitive to this (and I hope you are) just be mindful that when you come to a scene involving a settlement and a tied up wolf, skip the next page. I mean it. You'll thank me later.
The rest is wonderful. Recommended for those who enjoyed "Mrs Mike", "My Name is Mary Sutter" "These is my Words" etc
I have to give this five stars.
The story begins abruptly and the names are so unusual it took my mind a while to sort out who was who but once I did I couldn't put it down. I've read many Westward expansion books but this is the first one that let me envision the country that was, before the fields, when complete States were nothing but gigantic forests so monstrous one could get lost picking berries and never find the way home. The aloneness... I could feel it. Smell it. Taste it. Magical.
I have to tell you this is gritty. There is no graphic sex or anything like that, but it's a rough place. There's sickness, death, abandonment, and there is one horrifying scene of animal violence that was almost a deal breaker for me. I'm not saying don't read the book if you're an animal lover, but I will say that if you're sensitive to this (and I hope you are) just be mindful that when you come to a scene involving a settlement and a tied up wolf, skip the next page. I mean it. You'll thank me later.
The rest is wonderful. Recommended for those who enjoyed "Mrs Mike", "My Name is Mary Sutter" "These is my Words" etc
I have to give this five stars.
April 8, 2021
This is a novel about the American frontier at a time in the late eighteenth century in eastern Ohio when the first settlers were beginning to trickle in from the states east of the Alleghenies. Although it is a time that is long gone, it is still part of the American imagined identity as rugged individualists making something out of untamed wilderness. It was a time when the land north of the Ohio River was an unbroken sea of trees which created a world of dark first trails brightened only by a few beams of sunlight.
Into this land comes the Luckett family led by Worth Luckett—a hunter, trapper and woodsman looking for an area not yet hunted out of game. The book’s narrative primary follows Sayward, the eldest daughter, who is fifteen years old when the novel opens. Over the coming years their isolated cabin in the woods is joined by other settlers and the beginnings of civilization much to the dislike of Worth. After the death of his wife and loss the youngest daughter, Worth leaves his family behind to explore lands further west. But this story stays with Sayward and her brother and two remaining sisters in Ohio.
It’s my understanding that the book’s writing is based on thorough study of historic manuscripts and letters which gives the text the speech patterns and phrases and cadence of the original settlers along the Ohio River. The reader soon gets used to the unusual style of dialogue. The book’s description of their activities and living environment seems believable and realistic.
The following are some random impressions I received from this book:
1. The first settlers were more interested in hunting than farming. They depended on sale of skins and furs for money, and the meat for food. Surely they must of suffered from malnutrition. They cut down enough trees to build their cabins and for fuel, but no more.
2. The second generation (Sayward and husband) were more interested in farming, and they cleared the land of trees so it could be farmed. Doing so required considerable work, and the burning of large walnut, oak and hickory logs took all winter. All that wood was a nuisance to them, but today would be valuable.
3. They suffered some deaths, tragedies and hardships, but they didn't spend much time feeling sorry for themselves.
4. I was amazed how some couples got married with little or no courting.
Into this land comes the Luckett family led by Worth Luckett—a hunter, trapper and woodsman looking for an area not yet hunted out of game. The book’s narrative primary follows Sayward, the eldest daughter, who is fifteen years old when the novel opens. Over the coming years their isolated cabin in the woods is joined by other settlers and the beginnings of civilization much to the dislike of Worth. After the death of his wife and loss the youngest daughter, Worth leaves his family behind to explore lands further west. But this story stays with Sayward and her brother and two remaining sisters in Ohio.
It’s my understanding that the book’s writing is based on thorough study of historic manuscripts and letters which gives the text the speech patterns and phrases and cadence of the original settlers along the Ohio River. The reader soon gets used to the unusual style of dialogue. The book’s description of their activities and living environment seems believable and realistic.
The following are some random impressions I received from this book:
1. The first settlers were more interested in hunting than farming. They depended on sale of skins and furs for money, and the meat for food. Surely they must of suffered from malnutrition. They cut down enough trees to build their cabins and for fuel, but no more.
2. The second generation (Sayward and husband) were more interested in farming, and they cleared the land of trees so it could be farmed. Doing so required considerable work, and the burning of large walnut, oak and hickory logs took all winter. All that wood was a nuisance to them, but today would be valuable.
3. They suffered some deaths, tragedies and hardships, but they didn't spend much time feeling sorry for themselves.
4. I was amazed how some couples got married with little or no courting.
January 14, 2008
Favorite book(s) of all time. Beautifully written in poetic style using authentic dialog and well researched stories/attitudes/implements/activities of the time. Great record of westward progress, how it happened and the forces that drove it.This book stands alone, but is great with the other two books in the Awakening Land series. Get a personal view of progress from wilderness living to town living in the same location. Subtly raises questions about whether the europeans ruined the indians, whether progress to towns was a good thing, and many other issues we still struggle with today. I love these books and recommend them highly. Vocabulary may be a hurdle for some, but stay with the story and your efforts will be rewarded with a beautiful, all-american story.
July 17, 2022
The Trees begins the trilogy called The Awakening Land: The Trees, The Fields, & The Town in which Conrad Richter writes the beginning of the story of the Lucketts, a pioneering family from Pennsylvania seeking to settle unexplored land in Ohio. The land west of the Allegheny Mountains and north of the Ohio River was thick and dense with trees. To walk hundreds of miles through these dark and isolated forests to a place unknown and unexplored would have been daunting. The people who made these bold journeys were made of tough stuff to be able to drop everything and go and start anew. I’ve moved many times in my adult life with my own family but nothing about our experiences even compares to what the early pioneers encountered. Life today is luxurious compared to the hard scrabble experiences those that came before us dealt with just to make a life. This book introduces the Luckett family’s trials and challenges in making a new life.
The central character we follow throughout the novel is Sayward, the eldest of 5 children. She grows quickly into adulthood as we witness her strength of mind and body. Her father, Worth prefers an isolated life and so he chooses a spot to build their cabin surrounded by the darkness of the dense forests. His wife, Jary, wondered when she’d ever see the sun again. Worth is a wanderer, a “woodsy”-man who hunted and trapped to keep his family fed. An early tragedy, one of many struggles the family would face, places the focus on Sayward and we then see the story from her eyes and her thoughts.
For a moment Sayward reckoned that her father had fetched them unbeknownst to the Western ocean and what lay beneath was the late sun glittering on green-black water. Then she saw that what they looked down on was a dark, illimitable expanse of wilderness. It was a sea of solid treetops broken only by some gash where deep beneath the foliage an unknown stream made its way. As far as the eye could reach, this lonely forest sea rolled on and on till its faint blue billows broke against an incredibly distant horizon.
Sayward’s intelligence is not book smarts, as she knows nothing of an alphabet or how to write. Her clever intellect comes from her surroundings and from the folklore and superstitions (we’d call them that today, but back then they were beliefs) learned from family. For instance, one practice involved propping open the door of the cabin with a white rock instead of a fireplace log indicating special treatment of expected visitors. There were also marriage and burial customs that proved to be a great concern. A grave was dug going east and west so that the sun would shine on the faces of the dead when they sat up on resurrection morn. And other simpler beliefs had to do with who you’d marry. Sayward’s sister believed that if she swallows a dry thimbleful of salt right before going to bed, whoever gives her a drink of water in her dream that night will be her husband.
This is a slim volume but it’s packed full of fantastic characterization, rich descriptions of place, and genuine authenticity of voice. Richter made certain that the speech patterns of his characters were as the first settlers would have used in the early 18th century. This is a moving tale of a family who endures heartache, struggle, death, changes, unforeseen circumstances. I am looking forward to reading the next two volumes in the trilogy in the next two months. I anticipate what the Luckett family will encounter as their lives change with the coming of more people to the place they’ve chosen to live. What kinds of situations will they face as progress will certainly come to their part of the world?
Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self. That's how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that's the way it ran.
The central character we follow throughout the novel is Sayward, the eldest of 5 children. She grows quickly into adulthood as we witness her strength of mind and body. Her father, Worth prefers an isolated life and so he chooses a spot to build their cabin surrounded by the darkness of the dense forests. His wife, Jary, wondered when she’d ever see the sun again. Worth is a wanderer, a “woodsy”-man who hunted and trapped to keep his family fed. An early tragedy, one of many struggles the family would face, places the focus on Sayward and we then see the story from her eyes and her thoughts.
For a moment Sayward reckoned that her father had fetched them unbeknownst to the Western ocean and what lay beneath was the late sun glittering on green-black water. Then she saw that what they looked down on was a dark, illimitable expanse of wilderness. It was a sea of solid treetops broken only by some gash where deep beneath the foliage an unknown stream made its way. As far as the eye could reach, this lonely forest sea rolled on and on till its faint blue billows broke against an incredibly distant horizon.
Sayward’s intelligence is not book smarts, as she knows nothing of an alphabet or how to write. Her clever intellect comes from her surroundings and from the folklore and superstitions (we’d call them that today, but back then they were beliefs) learned from family. For instance, one practice involved propping open the door of the cabin with a white rock instead of a fireplace log indicating special treatment of expected visitors. There were also marriage and burial customs that proved to be a great concern. A grave was dug going east and west so that the sun would shine on the faces of the dead when they sat up on resurrection morn. And other simpler beliefs had to do with who you’d marry. Sayward’s sister believed that if she swallows a dry thimbleful of salt right before going to bed, whoever gives her a drink of water in her dream that night will be her husband.
This is a slim volume but it’s packed full of fantastic characterization, rich descriptions of place, and genuine authenticity of voice. Richter made certain that the speech patterns of his characters were as the first settlers would have used in the early 18th century. This is a moving tale of a family who endures heartache, struggle, death, changes, unforeseen circumstances. I am looking forward to reading the next two volumes in the trilogy in the next two months. I anticipate what the Luckett family will encounter as their lives change with the coming of more people to the place they’ve chosen to live. What kinds of situations will they face as progress will certainly come to their part of the world?
Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self. That's how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that's the way it ran.
July 4, 2022
In the late 18th Century, the Ludkett family traveled by foot from Pennsylvania into neighboring Ohio while carrying a few essential belongings. Ohio was almost completely forested with tall hardwoods, and only an occasional ray of light shone through the trees. Worth Luckett was a woodsman, a hunter, and a trapper who wanted to travel westward in search of plentiful wild game. Jary was sickly but tried to be supportive of her husband. Their five children made the best of things, led by their oldest daughter, Sayward. After settling in central Ohio, the Lucketts faced challenges and losses. Sayward had the inner strength and strong work ethic that kept the family together.
Author Conrad Richter wrote in the Foreward that he had access to a historical collection of rare books, manuscripts, and letters that helped him document the speech of the early pioneers of the Ohio Valley. It did not take long to get used to the unusual expressions from the context.
"The Trees" is an engaging, slim book that ends with new promising events changing Sayward's life. Fortunately, this book is part of "The Awakening Land" trilogy so I still have "The Fields" and "The Town" to enjoy reading this summer.
Author Conrad Richter wrote in the Foreward that he had access to a historical collection of rare books, manuscripts, and letters that helped him document the speech of the early pioneers of the Ohio Valley. It did not take long to get used to the unusual expressions from the context.
"The Trees" is an engaging, slim book that ends with new promising events changing Sayward's life. Fortunately, this book is part of "The Awakening Land" trilogy so I still have "The Fields" and "The Town" to enjoy reading this summer.
October 3, 2013
Richter's writing brought to mind the rhythms and cadences of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Yearling -- a pure reading of the time and state, without one glimmer of the revisionist's eye.
The novel enveloped me in the pioneering world of 1790, middle America, and I did not emerge until it rung its last stroke of the axe, as the clearings began to show face in the crowded landscape of trees. It felt to me a most accurate representation of what pioneering must have truly been like -- bugs, and lice and the oppressive push of the trees for some; wilderness and freedom and pure elemental nature, for others. Even within the pioneering spirit, there lay the dichotomy of town versus wilderness: those who longed to carve out their space out of it, and those who sought to submerge themselves within it. On both counts, Richter does justice to those brave men and women who insinuated themselves into the frontier, on their own terms.
The novel enveloped me in the pioneering world of 1790, middle America, and I did not emerge until it rung its last stroke of the axe, as the clearings began to show face in the crowded landscape of trees. It felt to me a most accurate representation of what pioneering must have truly been like -- bugs, and lice and the oppressive push of the trees for some; wilderness and freedom and pure elemental nature, for others. Even within the pioneering spirit, there lay the dichotomy of town versus wilderness: those who longed to carve out their space out of it, and those who sought to submerge themselves within it. On both counts, Richter does justice to those brave men and women who insinuated themselves into the frontier, on their own terms.
September 13, 2024
🌳 There are several books to Richter’s tale of a family of pioneers, but none so powerful, haunting and mysterious as the story of their coming to virgin, uncut and uncleared forest, forest virtually untouched from the dawn of time, where even midday looks like twilight among the tall trunks and branches
🌳 A magnificent story. I loved it.
🌳 A magnificent story. I loved it.
November 27, 2016
In the primeval forests of the Ohio Valley the trees stood dense, ancient, massive. From spring to late fall almost no light penetrated the depths of these forests.
Here the trees had been old men with beards when the woods in Pennsylvania were still whips....Down in Pennsylvania you could tell by the light. When a faint white drifted through the dark forest wall ahead, you knew you were getting to the top of a hill or an open place....But away back here across the Ohio, it had no fields. You tramped day long and when you looked ahead, the woods were dark as an hour or a day ago....Nothing moved in here. Even the green daylight stood still."It was the 1790s. Vermont and Kentucky had just added two stars to the American flag and the first white families were moving west.
Worth Luckett is a 'woodsy', a half-Delaware hunter and trapper infected with wanderlust. For him the virgin forests mean more game and furs. For his wife, Jary, the darkness of these forests becomes a darkness of the mind. Young Sayward ('Saird') is the oldest daughter and a tower of strength. (I kept seeing a young Jennifer Lawrence of Winter's Bone in the lead.) The Trees is mostly Saird's story--a dark, hard-lived tale of family, of survival and of the changes that came to an ancient land with the new settlers.
I loved the language. Richter apparently studied old collections of letters and journals to get a feel for the dialect of pioneer Pennsylvania and to research period details. It's wonderful. There was never a moment when I felt outside of that time and place. I never had the feeling that I so often get with contemporary historical fiction that these are modern characters with 21st century sensibilities plunked down in another era. No. Every one of the many family members and minor characters who live among these trees belong.
Wikipedia says that there are later editions out there that have plot changes to fit a TV series and have had some of the less PC stuff edited out. Be sure to read the original 1940s version.
UPDATE: Recommended theme music for The Trees: https://youtu.be/gDmeKER44MY
June 28, 2021
I expected this novel to show its age 81 years after publication; but Conrad’s writing holds up surprisingly well. The late 18th century diction can get a little tiresome, but I felt this was more than a typical western genre novel. Sure, this novel is best suited for those readers who enjoy that type of story, but there are several passages that are of undeniable quality that every fan of literature could appreciate. There is one in particular regarding the imminent arrival of death that I found original and moving.
In other words, this novel has a little more depth than a typical western, and is intriguing enough that I decided to go ahead and jump right into the second installment of this trilogy. I think excellent is a fair description. Low four stars.
That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.
In other words, this novel has a little more depth than a typical western, and is intriguing enough that I decided to go ahead and jump right into the second installment of this trilogy. I think excellent is a fair description. Low four stars.
That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.
November 4, 2023
First of the authors trilogy following the fates of the Luckett family as they leave their home in Pennsylvania and move into an Ohio that few would recognize today. Fraught with both peril and hope, Richter follows this families fortune as they try and carve out a home in this new and wild land. Richter also uses the language of the time period in his books and while it might not be what we are used to, it adds a true realism in the book. Not a long read, but very interesting, as he keeps the plot moving at a perfect pace and we can use our imaginations as to the hardships that the family must overcome. Very good read!
January 2, 2021
This is the first in a trilogy about several generations of a family settling the western territories in the 19th century. This one is set in the early decades of that century. As it opens, a young family is living in a remote wooded area, fearful of the Dakotas, their only neighbors, and living almost exclusively on wild game. As it ends, the young children are getting married, beginning to clear land to plant crops and forming community with white neighbors. This gives a realistic portrayal of the hardships endured by the earliest settlers and their strength to persevere.
July 8, 2022
I wanted to like this book more than I did.
In its favor, the book does give a pretty clear picture of how difficult settlement of the Northwest territory actually was. Imagine trying to tame a dense forest, to clear it for cultivation of food crops, without modern tools like chain saws and bull dozers. And that comes after you manage to make a cabin and all of the furniture and utensils you might need to support your existence. Meanwhile, you also have to feed and clean yourself and your children, and keep everyone free from accidents and disease.
I just didn’t connect very well with the characters and the plot was only basic enough to keep me mildly interested. Also, while the vernacular prose may have been authentic, it did not help my enjoyment of the novel.
Maybe 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3. I will continue with the series, though, and maybe I will make better connections as the story continues. Next up is The Fields, to followed by The Town.
In its favor, the book does give a pretty clear picture of how difficult settlement of the Northwest territory actually was. Imagine trying to tame a dense forest, to clear it for cultivation of food crops, without modern tools like chain saws and bull dozers. And that comes after you manage to make a cabin and all of the furniture and utensils you might need to support your existence. Meanwhile, you also have to feed and clean yourself and your children, and keep everyone free from accidents and disease.
I just didn’t connect very well with the characters and the plot was only basic enough to keep me mildly interested. Also, while the vernacular prose may have been authentic, it did not help my enjoyment of the novel.
Maybe 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3. I will continue with the series, though, and maybe I will make better connections as the story continues. Next up is The Fields, to followed by The Town.
November 14, 2019
I read this award winning work of fiction, on pioneering the Ohio river region, a number of years ago.
I remember both the writing and story telling as excellent. A cautionary note — this book is highly anachronistic, as in it felt like it was written in 1900 about events 100 years earlier than that. Actually it was written in 1950.
3.0 to 4.5 stars depending on one’s preference for older books about even older topics.
I remember both the writing and story telling as excellent. A cautionary note — this book is highly anachronistic, as in it felt like it was written in 1900 about events 100 years earlier than that. Actually it was written in 1950.
3.0 to 4.5 stars depending on one’s preference for older books about even older topics.
July 7, 2022
Wonderful start to a trilogy
June 2, 2012
The Trees is easily one of my top five favorite books I've ever read. Richter was living in New Mexico when a neighbor gave him a 1600 page history (journals and stories) of the pioneers of the Ohio River Valley. He took his characters, the way they speak, their way of life, from actual living people. That is what made this book for me - every moment rang true. In the beginning, the Luckett family is making their way west from Pennsylvania because the husband/father, Worth, thinks Pennsylvania is getting too crowded. The animals are heading west, and so is he. Worth was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and heading into the Ohio River Valley - a nice segue from reading Washington's biography. Worth's wife, Jary, and their five children are traveling through this rough country with him. Jary has serious doubts about this move, but she is a dutiful wife and goes along with her husband. They travel in a forest so dense they can't see the sun in the middle of the day. Worth decides to settle down right in the middle of the trees with no one else around for miles.
Heartbreaking, beautiful, funny, informative, true... loved every minute of this book.
Heartbreaking, beautiful, funny, informative, true... loved every minute of this book.
January 20, 2022
“That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.”
Loved! 5 solid stars.
The word that comes to mind when I think of this book is “simple”, but I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. It’s beautiful because of its simplicity.
A family moves from Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley where they begin a new life. Now, I love nature and hiking and frolicking through the wilderness like a gay deer, but the way Richter describes life in the middle of the woods in 1795, how dense yet desolate it was, how vast and stifling, how the sunlight would barely touch your skin - it’s scary when you think about it. Richter forces you to.
There’s a lot eeriness going on in the background of the story - the forest, or what’s in the forest, is always looming over everything everyone does, and Richter writes about how it affects people in different ways. One passage in particular I really liked:
“Jary used to tell how back in Pennsylvania they would lay out the dead in a room without a fire and with the window open to keep that taint from getting any worse till men could ride far as they could with news of the burying. One time Jary was in such a house when they heard a fearsome screech at night in the room where nobody but the dead was. The men pushed in with candles and found that snow had drifted in over the box set on saw horses under the window and it showed tracks where a bobcat had come in and tramped over the corpse.”
I loved the archaic dialogue and language that was true to the era (and I read Richter did a lot of research to make it as authentic as possible). Overall “The Trees” sort of felt like an old, lived in folk song. There aren’t any crazy, elaborate plot lines, the characters aren’t overly complex - but you become attached and invested in what happens to each of them. So many touching moments made even more poignant by Richter’s turn of phrase.
Loved! 5 solid stars.
The word that comes to mind when I think of this book is “simple”, but I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. It’s beautiful because of its simplicity.
A family moves from Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley where they begin a new life. Now, I love nature and hiking and frolicking through the wilderness like a gay deer, but the way Richter describes life in the middle of the woods in 1795, how dense yet desolate it was, how vast and stifling, how the sunlight would barely touch your skin - it’s scary when you think about it. Richter forces you to.
There’s a lot eeriness going on in the background of the story - the forest, or what’s in the forest, is always looming over everything everyone does, and Richter writes about how it affects people in different ways. One passage in particular I really liked:
“Jary used to tell how back in Pennsylvania they would lay out the dead in a room without a fire and with the window open to keep that taint from getting any worse till men could ride far as they could with news of the burying. One time Jary was in such a house when they heard a fearsome screech at night in the room where nobody but the dead was. The men pushed in with candles and found that snow had drifted in over the box set on saw horses under the window and it showed tracks where a bobcat had come in and tramped over the corpse.”
I loved the archaic dialogue and language that was true to the era (and I read Richter did a lot of research to make it as authentic as possible). Overall “The Trees” sort of felt like an old, lived in folk song. There aren’t any crazy, elaborate plot lines, the characters aren’t overly complex - but you become attached and invested in what happens to each of them. So many touching moments made even more poignant by Richter’s turn of phrase.
January 16, 2022
This was the first book of Conrad's trilogy about the settling of Ohio. As such, it was an interesting view into life in the US in the 19th century, and it was unsettling at times to think of Ohio as "west" when for me it has always been "midwest". The characters are kind of one-dimensional. Our heroine - the trilogy basically follows her life from birth to death - is a little girl here and the passages of her discovering her world was nice. However, her father is a cad and naturally disappears in order for her to grow and mature as an individual. I wasn't blown away by the writing or character development, but read it because book #3 in the series, The Town won the Pulitzer in 1951.
One nice passage (or phrase at least): "Still he went slowly. He was loathe to leave those two out there where he could not see them. He didn't want to break the cord that stretched from his heart to theirs departing in the mist and rain. He felt closer to them than his own family." (pp. 14)
One nice passage (or phrase at least): "Still he went slowly. He was loathe to leave those two out there where he could not see them. He didn't want to break the cord that stretched from his heart to theirs departing in the mist and rain. He felt closer to them than his own family." (pp. 14)
September 25, 2016
This is another classic American pioneer saga originally published in 1940. It tells the story of a family who leaves Pennsylvania in the late 1700s because the country is facing a "woods famine" (a year of poor hunting). They move west, cross the Ohio River, and settle in the deep forests of that territory.
One of my favorite things about this novel is the language. There were so many words I didn't know that must come from vernacular. Some I could figure out from context; others still puzzle me. Here are a few:
The characters in this book live a tough life, but they are blessed with moments of pure contentment and joy. Here is one: "...when she raised her eyes she'd know this place would never fail her. It was dim with a kind of pine woods night and yet out there beyond the dark, scaly butts and branches the blinding sunlight came down, turning a ferny bank to golden, tender green and sparkling on the river with silver. Out there lay a new world. It was like something to come in her own life some day, something bright and shining on ahead." (118)
Gender roles are depicted quite traditionally, which is appropriate given the time period. But many of the female characters (especially Sayward) have some spirit and fight, which is always nice to see.
Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable read. It is the first title in a trilogy, so there is more to come!
One of my favorite things about this novel is the language. There were so many words I didn't know that must come from vernacular. Some I could figure out from context; others still puzzle me. Here are a few:
"the bound boy's reddish hair was tied behind with a ribbon snipped off a bolt of blue strouding" - a "bound boy" is indentured; "strouding" must be a type of cloth (112)
"Down the a run a young doe lifted its head and stared at her with eyes it was a shame to think a corbie would pick out some day" - what's a "corbie"? (116)
"But if Wyitt wasn't 'afeard,' what was he gadding the cows so hard for? They went skyting and belling up hill and down" - "skyting" is the one I don't know here (139)
"'I need some'un to put a clapboard roof on my cabin.... They said you had a frow and was handy with tools'" - "frow"? (141)
The characters in this book live a tough life, but they are blessed with moments of pure contentment and joy. Here is one: "...when she raised her eyes she'd know this place would never fail her. It was dim with a kind of pine woods night and yet out there beyond the dark, scaly butts and branches the blinding sunlight came down, turning a ferny bank to golden, tender green and sparkling on the river with silver. Out there lay a new world. It was like something to come in her own life some day, something bright and shining on ahead." (118)
Gender roles are depicted quite traditionally, which is appropriate given the time period. But many of the female characters (especially Sayward) have some spirit and fight, which is always nice to see.
Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable read. It is the first title in a trilogy, so there is more to come!
June 7, 2018
The Trees is Conrad Richter's first novel in "The Awakening Land" trilogy: he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for his third novel in the series, The Town.
Trees came highly recommended by my friend Charles, who has dependably shared my taste in movies and books, and hit a home run last year with his recommendations Lucifer's Hammer and The Mote in God's Eye.
"Conrad Richter? The guy who wrote The Light in the Forest?" I asked doubtfully. I had read The Light in the Forest in the sixth grade, and hadn't thought much of it at the time (the problem when you are forced to read something).
I didn't think much of Trees a hundred pages in, either. It was fine, but just didn't really seem like a "Charles" recommendation; secondly, Richter had kind of a backwoods dialogue going on that--while I'm sure realistic--broke up the flow of the narrative far too often, disengaging me.
This is a book that creeps up on you, though. It paints an honest, non-romanticized picture of what frontier life must've been for pioneers: how they literally carved their way from wilderness to the beginnings of civilization. Terrible stuff happens out in the forest of the Ohio Valley to the Luckett family, who are led by dependable eldest daughter Sayward. They confront hardship after hardship, and it's all Sayward can do just to keep the family together. The strength of the novel lies in Sayward's steadfastness, Richter's ability to make something utterly shocking happen just by sneaking a simple sentence into a paragraph like it's no biggee, and finally, making said Trees into their own menacing characters.
This ends up being a fine novel, and can stand on its own. (I can say that because I've only read the first in the series.) However: the end had quite an impact on me. After reading the final pages, knowing it's part one of a series called The Awakening Land seems much more profound. Everything prior seems all the more honest and real, and a true first step in the progression from wilderness to township.
Trees came highly recommended by my friend Charles, who has dependably shared my taste in movies and books, and hit a home run last year with his recommendations Lucifer's Hammer and The Mote in God's Eye.
"Conrad Richter? The guy who wrote The Light in the Forest?" I asked doubtfully. I had read The Light in the Forest in the sixth grade, and hadn't thought much of it at the time (the problem when you are forced to read something).
I didn't think much of Trees a hundred pages in, either. It was fine, but just didn't really seem like a "Charles" recommendation; secondly, Richter had kind of a backwoods dialogue going on that--while I'm sure realistic--broke up the flow of the narrative far too often, disengaging me.
This is a book that creeps up on you, though. It paints an honest, non-romanticized picture of what frontier life must've been for pioneers: how they literally carved their way from wilderness to the beginnings of civilization. Terrible stuff happens out in the forest of the Ohio Valley to the Luckett family, who are led by dependable eldest daughter Sayward. They confront hardship after hardship, and it's all Sayward can do just to keep the family together. The strength of the novel lies in Sayward's steadfastness, Richter's ability to make something utterly shocking happen just by sneaking a simple sentence into a paragraph like it's no biggee, and finally, making said Trees into their own menacing characters.
This ends up being a fine novel, and can stand on its own. (I can say that because I've only read the first in the series.) However: the end had quite an impact on me. After reading the final pages, knowing it's part one of a series called The Awakening Land seems much more profound. Everything prior seems all the more honest and real, and a true first step in the progression from wilderness to township.
February 11, 2018
Extraordinary achievement that transports a reader into a world that once was, but is no longer...
Even more impressive, if rather challenging for the reader, Conrad Richter's fiction not only preserves the physical and social reality of a time and place now lost, but in the telling has also preserved lost aspects of language itself. The dialect and words Richter uses, while still generally comprehensible, seem richly "historic" to a modern American English ear.
In fact, I ardently wish an annotated version, complete with commentary and definitions in the margin, had been available. I reckon such a thing would certainly enrich the reading experience for all and would, I suspect, preserve the book's longevity.
THE TREES begins in the late eighteenth century and features the lives of ordinary people encountering a virgin forested wilderness in what is today called Ohio.
When I commenced my reading journey of THE TREES, first published in 1940, I was aware that THE TREES is the first book of a trilogy called THE AWAKENING LAND. THE FIELDS was published in 1946 six years after THE TREES and THE TOWN appeared first in 1950.
I had no intention of reading beyond THE TREES.
Whoops! I couldn't help myself. I am already happily several chapters into THE FIELDS.
Even more impressive, if rather challenging for the reader, Conrad Richter's fiction not only preserves the physical and social reality of a time and place now lost, but in the telling has also preserved lost aspects of language itself. The dialect and words Richter uses, while still generally comprehensible, seem richly "historic" to a modern American English ear.
In fact, I ardently wish an annotated version, complete with commentary and definitions in the margin, had been available. I reckon such a thing would certainly enrich the reading experience for all and would, I suspect, preserve the book's longevity.
THE TREES begins in the late eighteenth century and features the lives of ordinary people encountering a virgin forested wilderness in what is today called Ohio.
When I commenced my reading journey of THE TREES, first published in 1940, I was aware that THE TREES is the first book of a trilogy called THE AWAKENING LAND. THE FIELDS was published in 1946 six years after THE TREES and THE TOWN appeared first in 1950.
I had no intention of reading beyond THE TREES.
Whoops! I couldn't help myself. I am already happily several chapters into THE FIELDS.
November 6, 2016
I read The Trees (The Fields & The Town) after I watched and loved The Awakening Land mini-series on television in 1978 with Elizabeth Montgomery playing the brave and often desperate protagonist, Sayward Luckett. I loved the series so much I've re-read all three books multiple times over the years, purchased and shared them with friends, and made them almost required reading for my family (who loved them too). Richter wrote The Trees in dialect which might be a barrier to some, but if the reader will persist for just a few chapters, the cadence will begin to come more easily (at least it did for me). It's a story of struggle to survive and prosper in a wild and untamed land and time when primeval forests were dense and alive in North America. Richter's writing makes the landscape visceral, you can feel the pulse of the forest, it's denseness, almost smell the respiration of the trees--the way it was, before our "taming".
August 7, 2013
Wow! Gritty and real. Dialect to cadence, so precise to the period. Not an ounce of revisionist eyes or characterizations. Pioneers in America as experienced in the early days of the nation. Nothing is a given or any sure outcome for these people. Nothing.
Classic.
Classic.
February 5, 2013
Like a grown-up, raw version of Little House books. Convincingly transported me to late 18th-century Ohio life.
July 2, 2017
In later years when it was all to go so that her own father wouldn’t know the place if he rose from his bury hole, she was to call the scene to mind. This is the way it is, she would say to herself. Nowhere else but in the American wilderness could it have been.
The Trees was a book suggested to me by Goodreads due to my interest in Colonial America, and because I shelved several other books with similar premises. I'm not usually one for accepting recommendations based on formulae or algorithm, though in this case it worked to my advantage.
It's the first of three in the The Awakening Land trilogy, a story set in the late 18th century, just after the Revolutionary War, in which we follow the Luckett family as they make their way west from Pennsylvania into the Ohio valley, eventually settling in what is now central Ohio. I did not realize this prior to beginning the book, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was local historical fiction, and though the characters refer to the area as 'the Northwest Territory' (Ohio wouldn't become a state until 1803), several of the locations they mention by name were familiar to me.
The Luckett family is comprised of seven individuals: Worth and Jary, the father and mother; their four daughters: Sayward, Genny, Achsa, and Sulie; and their single son, Wyitt. Worth is a ‘woodsie’ in his late thirties and a man who prefers the frontier to civilization, which is the reason he took his family west in search of a patch of ground they could call their own. Jary, also in her late thirties and, having given birth to six children (one of them still-born) is already frail and worn, made worse due to her suffering from Consumption. The children carry a variety of personalities suitable of their age, the oldest being in her late teens, and the youngest being merely four or five.
Once upon a time Sayward wished she had a clock. Mrs. Covenhoven had one, and Portius Wheeler, the bound boy said, carried a pocket clock that struck the hours though it was no bigger around than his fist. A clock, Sayward reckoned, was almost human, for it had a face, hands and sense to tell the time. No doubt it was a friendly face to have around and to hear it ticking sociably through the day and night. But a human could tell time the best, for some hours were fast and some were slow. Now you could tell nothing from Sayward’s face, but the hours of this last week were the longest in all her born days. This was a time in her life, she thought, she would never want to go back to and live again.
As is appropriate for the period they lived, their lives are brutal. Illness and the danger of starvation are the family's constant companions, though Worth proves to be a good provider, keeping the family 'in meat' by spending his days hunting and trading furs. Sayward, being the oldest, takes a leading role in the protection of her younger siblings due to her mother's illness, while the children tend to the cabin and eventually begin to earn goods by tending to their neighbors livestock or by learning to hunt themselves.
As more and more families and individuals move west, the Lucketts inadvertently find themselves as the citizens of what could become a larger settlement rather than just a few scattered cabins. Children grow, parents pass on, and families mingle, and the Luckett family that we knew initially isn't the one that we find in the end.
While this may all sound very House on the Prairieish, it really is anything but. There are no underlying moral teachings waiting to be expounded on, or simple children's tales to be extracted and taught. Richter isn't showing us a romanticized version of the frontier, but a realistic and historically centered one, brought to life via the character's dialogue, as well as the book's language. Conrad poured over diaries and accounts of the early settlers prior to writing this, ensuring that the dialect and speech patterns were genuine. I'm no stickler when it comes to historical accuracy, but the dialogue certainly feels period accurate, as does the narration, which gives it the feeling of reading through a colonial journal, adding to the sensation of authenticity. The complete effect is that the story brings the characters and period to life, though it may require the modern reader to return to a passage more than once to grasp what the author, and the characters, are saying.
This brings another point to mind that, in many ways, because of this language, but also in presentation, The Trees is a very casually paced book. It's not a stereotyped action-packed yarn about a pioneer family fending off the standard dangers of the American frontier. There are actually only two sections of the book that I would consider exciting, and their effect on me was heightened precisely because of how gradually the story unfolds. Everything is told organically, nothing feeling artificial or forced. It's as if Richter sat down without any notion of where he was headed (in much the same way as the Luckett family), and allowed the characters to tell him the story.
In that way, it brings another level of genuineness to the narrative as I was not waiting for an action sequence, or watching the buildup of a falsely heightened conflict that I knew would have its conclusion in the last fifteen pages. I simply had no idea what was coming, and neither did the characters, and because of that it was engaging for the duration. It's far less about set-pieces and very much a character study of the family and those with whom they interact. Because it's so character-centric, and because Richter leisurely establishes the characters, there is a great deal of subtle and suggestive story-telling, manifested in character actions and reactions. This rewards the attentive and patient reader, and perhaps even more so, the revisiting reader.
I appreciate this type of subtle and non-formulaic storytelling where the characters are given room to breathe, the situations are born from the characters and not vice versa, and suggestion is used to allow the reader to contemplate the individuals ambiguously rather than have it stated directly. It establishes the tone of exploration and discovery, rather than trope and convention, which is suitable considering the material.
I enjoyed The Trees though as I said earlier it’s a very casually paced read and more of a character drama than an exploration of the period itself. It's a carefully constructed cross-section of early Americana from an incredibly committed and talented author.The two focal points are the language and the people, all else fades into the heavily wooded background where the book most aptly takes its name. It’s not something I would suggest for the impatient reader, or those with little interest in the post-Revolutionary period. It’s really a good read, and the first of a trilogy that I'm now genuinely interested in continuing.
Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self. […] That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.
The Trees was a book suggested to me by Goodreads due to my interest in Colonial America, and because I shelved several other books with similar premises. I'm not usually one for accepting recommendations based on formulae or algorithm, though in this case it worked to my advantage.
It's the first of three in the The Awakening Land trilogy, a story set in the late 18th century, just after the Revolutionary War, in which we follow the Luckett family as they make their way west from Pennsylvania into the Ohio valley, eventually settling in what is now central Ohio. I did not realize this prior to beginning the book, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was local historical fiction, and though the characters refer to the area as 'the Northwest Territory' (Ohio wouldn't become a state until 1803), several of the locations they mention by name were familiar to me.
The Luckett family is comprised of seven individuals: Worth and Jary, the father and mother; their four daughters: Sayward, Genny, Achsa, and Sulie; and their single son, Wyitt. Worth is a ‘woodsie’ in his late thirties and a man who prefers the frontier to civilization, which is the reason he took his family west in search of a patch of ground they could call their own. Jary, also in her late thirties and, having given birth to six children (one of them still-born) is already frail and worn, made worse due to her suffering from Consumption. The children carry a variety of personalities suitable of their age, the oldest being in her late teens, and the youngest being merely four or five.
Once upon a time Sayward wished she had a clock. Mrs. Covenhoven had one, and Portius Wheeler, the bound boy said, carried a pocket clock that struck the hours though it was no bigger around than his fist. A clock, Sayward reckoned, was almost human, for it had a face, hands and sense to tell the time. No doubt it was a friendly face to have around and to hear it ticking sociably through the day and night. But a human could tell time the best, for some hours were fast and some were slow. Now you could tell nothing from Sayward’s face, but the hours of this last week were the longest in all her born days. This was a time in her life, she thought, she would never want to go back to and live again.
As is appropriate for the period they lived, their lives are brutal. Illness and the danger of starvation are the family's constant companions, though Worth proves to be a good provider, keeping the family 'in meat' by spending his days hunting and trading furs. Sayward, being the oldest, takes a leading role in the protection of her younger siblings due to her mother's illness, while the children tend to the cabin and eventually begin to earn goods by tending to their neighbors livestock or by learning to hunt themselves.
As more and more families and individuals move west, the Lucketts inadvertently find themselves as the citizens of what could become a larger settlement rather than just a few scattered cabins. Children grow, parents pass on, and families mingle, and the Luckett family that we knew initially isn't the one that we find in the end.
While this may all sound very House on the Prairieish, it really is anything but. There are no underlying moral teachings waiting to be expounded on, or simple children's tales to be extracted and taught. Richter isn't showing us a romanticized version of the frontier, but a realistic and historically centered one, brought to life via the character's dialogue, as well as the book's language. Conrad poured over diaries and accounts of the early settlers prior to writing this, ensuring that the dialect and speech patterns were genuine. I'm no stickler when it comes to historical accuracy, but the dialogue certainly feels period accurate, as does the narration, which gives it the feeling of reading through a colonial journal, adding to the sensation of authenticity. The complete effect is that the story brings the characters and period to life, though it may require the modern reader to return to a passage more than once to grasp what the author, and the characters, are saying.
This brings another point to mind that, in many ways, because of this language, but also in presentation, The Trees is a very casually paced book. It's not a stereotyped action-packed yarn about a pioneer family fending off the standard dangers of the American frontier. There are actually only two sections of the book that I would consider exciting, and their effect on me was heightened precisely because of how gradually the story unfolds. Everything is told organically, nothing feeling artificial or forced. It's as if Richter sat down without any notion of where he was headed (in much the same way as the Luckett family), and allowed the characters to tell him the story.
In that way, it brings another level of genuineness to the narrative as I was not waiting for an action sequence, or watching the buildup of a falsely heightened conflict that I knew would have its conclusion in the last fifteen pages. I simply had no idea what was coming, and neither did the characters, and because of that it was engaging for the duration. It's far less about set-pieces and very much a character study of the family and those with whom they interact. Because it's so character-centric, and because Richter leisurely establishes the characters, there is a great deal of subtle and suggestive story-telling, manifested in character actions and reactions. This rewards the attentive and patient reader, and perhaps even more so, the revisiting reader.
I appreciate this type of subtle and non-formulaic storytelling where the characters are given room to breathe, the situations are born from the characters and not vice versa, and suggestion is used to allow the reader to contemplate the individuals ambiguously rather than have it stated directly. It establishes the tone of exploration and discovery, rather than trope and convention, which is suitable considering the material.
I enjoyed The Trees though as I said earlier it’s a very casually paced read and more of a character drama than an exploration of the period itself. It's a carefully constructed cross-section of early Americana from an incredibly committed and talented author.The two focal points are the language and the people, all else fades into the heavily wooded background where the book most aptly takes its name. It’s not something I would suggest for the impatient reader, or those with little interest in the post-Revolutionary period. It’s really a good read, and the first of a trilogy that I'm now genuinely interested in continuing.
Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self. […] That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.
July 1, 2011
This is my all time favorite book. The story tells of a family's move to the Northwest Territory (Ohio) in the late eigthteenth century. Richter doesnn't romanticize the family or the tribulations they face. The mother dies of tuberculosis and the father, a hunter, abandons the family for long stretches of time. The responsibility of caring for the family falls to the oldest, a girl named Saywood.
This book, and the two that follow are about her life in the changing world she lives in. The Ohio wilderness she finds as a teenage girl changes to a bustling town by the time she dies in the final book. But it is The Trees that capture the burgeoning America and the people who settled and tamed it.
Every time I read this book, I find something new in it and would recommend it to anyone intersted in frontier America.
This book, and the two that follow are about her life in the changing world she lives in. The Ohio wilderness she finds as a teenage girl changes to a bustling town by the time she dies in the final book. But it is The Trees that capture the burgeoning America and the people who settled and tamed it.
Every time I read this book, I find something new in it and would recommend it to anyone intersted in frontier America.
July 10, 2022
This novel is about the settling of the south-central region of Ohio during the period of 1795 to approximately 1799. This novel begins by introducing us to the Luckett family as they travel from Pennsylvania across the Ohio River looking for a new start in the northwest territories where land and game are plentiful. The Lucketts consist of parents Worth and Jacy and their 5 children, listed in age order: Sayward, Jenny, Ascha, Wyitt, (the only boy) and Sulie. They find a nice, wooded area about a 3-day hike from the Ohio River and the rest of the novel is about their attempts to ‘settle.”
The first thing that struck me was just how direct, simple and raw the writing in this book felt. The dialogue is full of rough and rural period vernacular, something that gives the novel an authentic sound, not dissimilar to Thomas Hardy’s dialect use and descriptions of his more rustic Wessex inhabitants.
Besides the dialogue, Richter also writes his narrative in direct, simple prose, as in this example from Chapter 8:
“He had no notion it was this far home. He felt he had walked half the night. He should have got to the cabin and back by this time. The path kept making strange turns this way and that.”
Richter’s narrative often replicates his characters’ vernacular as in this sentence from Chapter 11: “Leastwise, that’s how Sayward and Genny reckoned a lemon would taste.”
Richter’s writing style is effective in helping the reader feel the rough and gritty life these early settlers endured and does complement the dialogue. It helped pull me into the story at the beginning. However, whereas Hardy writes his narrative in more expressive, lyrical and descriptive prose that adds beauty and liveliness to his rustic dialogue, characters and setting, Richter’s narrative continues the simple rustic nature of his dialogue. This simple direct prose does fit the historical, almost documentarian, intent of his novel but, while I enjoyed it for most of the story, I started getting a bit tired of it by the end of the book.
At the same time, I also grew a bit tired of the family members other than Sayward and Sulie. I found the events surrounding them to be interesting but was surprised by some of their attitudes. For spoiler reasons I won’t explain the specifics. Yet, despite this almost antipathy toward them, I still find myself curious about their fates. While I understand that The Fields and The Town will center even more on Sayward, the most empathetic and well-drawn character, I do hope for some clarity and side-stories about the other family members in these sequels. Overall, I rate this book as 4 stars.
The first thing that struck me was just how direct, simple and raw the writing in this book felt. The dialogue is full of rough and rural period vernacular, something that gives the novel an authentic sound, not dissimilar to Thomas Hardy’s dialect use and descriptions of his more rustic Wessex inhabitants.
Besides the dialogue, Richter also writes his narrative in direct, simple prose, as in this example from Chapter 8:
“He had no notion it was this far home. He felt he had walked half the night. He should have got to the cabin and back by this time. The path kept making strange turns this way and that.”
Richter’s narrative often replicates his characters’ vernacular as in this sentence from Chapter 11: “Leastwise, that’s how Sayward and Genny reckoned a lemon would taste.”
Richter’s writing style is effective in helping the reader feel the rough and gritty life these early settlers endured and does complement the dialogue. It helped pull me into the story at the beginning. However, whereas Hardy writes his narrative in more expressive, lyrical and descriptive prose that adds beauty and liveliness to his rustic dialogue, characters and setting, Richter’s narrative continues the simple rustic nature of his dialogue. This simple direct prose does fit the historical, almost documentarian, intent of his novel but, while I enjoyed it for most of the story, I started getting a bit tired of it by the end of the book.
At the same time, I also grew a bit tired of the family members other than Sayward and Sulie. I found the events surrounding them to be interesting but was surprised by some of their attitudes. For spoiler reasons I won’t explain the specifics. Yet, despite this almost antipathy toward them, I still find myself curious about their fates. While I understand that The Fields and The Town will center even more on Sayward, the most empathetic and well-drawn character, I do hope for some clarity and side-stories about the other family members in these sequels. Overall, I rate this book as 4 stars.
December 10, 2025
Oh, how I aspire to be like Sayward with such mental strength and resolve. For me, one nervous when the sky is blue in fear of oncoming rain clouds, I wish to mature into Sayward’s Proverbs 31 behaviors, looking on tomorrow only to see what needs to be done and doing it. Not placing her sense of self in things that can be lost but instead growing with the circumstances, ever acclimating while staying unwavering to herself.
“Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self….That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.”
“Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self….That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran.”
Read
August 9, 2022This was my first Conrad Richter novel, and I loved it so much that I’m looking forward to continuing the story in his three-part series, The Awakening Land. The story takes place in the late 1700s to early 1800s, at the start of the pioneer migration into the Northwest Territory, in the current state of Ohio. It was a densely forested, unpopulated land. Richter’s story follows the Luckett family and the challenges they faced day to day as they made this land their home. The story was so poignant at times, and Richter showed just how heartbreaking this life could be.
I have read many books on the westward migration along the Oregon Trail, but this earlier migration was unfamiliar to me. In many ways, I thought these pioneers had a much harder time because of their social isolation and lack of mutual support from neighbors and friends. It was indeed a robust breed of people who struck out into this harsh land to seek a better life.
Richter’s language was so rich and authentic. It seemed so true to how these early pioneers would have expressed themselves. It really added so much to the atmosphere of the story.
I have read many books on the westward migration along the Oregon Trail, but this earlier migration was unfamiliar to me. In many ways, I thought these pioneers had a much harder time because of their social isolation and lack of mutual support from neighbors and friends. It was indeed a robust breed of people who struck out into this harsh land to seek a better life.
Richter’s language was so rich and authentic. It seemed so true to how these early pioneers would have expressed themselves. It really added so much to the atmosphere of the story.
February 14, 2009
This is a really old book. It was written long before the 80's, which I think is the earliest edition this system showed me. I borrowed the hard cover from my aunt who had gotten it as part of the enormous collection of books which had come with her really old cottage in Gay Head. The book was already ancient when she bought the house, the woman who had previously owned the house having had it since early in the century when her family lived in it, the house, that is. Dorothy, I think she was called, was a terrific character.... a really unique lady, a journalist for local and Florida papers, single, cared for parents and a disabled sister, left her nominal estate to her rector and his wife, who gave much of it to the historical society. Anyway, I digress... She was a great and interesting woman with a wonderful collection of books she left behind when she died and her heirs left behind when they sold... Incredible book.... Absolutely beautiful and richly told. One of the best books I have ever read..... all those years of reading the Little House books as a child... evolving into a more mature realistic image of pioneering in the huge endless forests of the midwest decades before the Ingalls family made their home there. I remember Suli and her sister and brother and the parent (father?) who just up and went away and how one day Suli, just a little girl, just didn't come home from her day in the woods and how the other siblings just knew that she was gone for good and that was that, that was the reality of life, no point in wishing it otherwise.
I remember the images of the trees, endless, endless, endless.... what unimaginable beauty and darkness and quiet and isolation.... Incredible book. Just incredible.
Maybe I'll go find a copy of it and read it again.
I remember the images of the trees, endless, endless, endless.... what unimaginable beauty and darkness and quiet and isolation.... Incredible book. Just incredible.
Maybe I'll go find a copy of it and read it again.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 490 reviews