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Plantation Trilogy: Deep Summer, The Handsome Road, and This Side of Glory
A saga of Louisiana by an author who “belongs among those Southern novelists who are trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms” (The New York Times). Published in the late 1930s by New York Times–bestselling author Gwen Bristow, the Plantation Trilogy is an epic series of novels that bring to life the history of Louisiana—from its settlement in the late eighteenth century to the realities of slavery and poverty to the post–World War I era—via the intertwined lives of the members of three the Sheramys, the Larnes, and the Upjohns. Deep Summer is the story of Puritan pioneer Judith Sheramy and adventurer Philip Larne, who marry and strive to build an empire in the Louisiana wilderness during the American Revolution. The Handsome Road tells the story of plantation mistress Ann Sheramy Larne and poor seamstress Corrie May Upjohn, who forge an unlikely bond of friendship as they struggle to survive the cataclysms of the Civil War and Reconstruction. This Side of Glory presents the story of Eleanor Upjohn, a modern young woman in the early twentieth century who marries charming Kester Larne and struggles to save the debt-ridden plantation that her husband’s ancestors founded more than one hundred years ago.
1070 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1962
421 people are currently reading
737 people want to read
About the author
Gwen Bristow
44 books181 followersGwen Bristow (September 16, 1903 - August 17, 1980) was an American author and journalist. She studied at Columbia University and afterwards wrote for a number of literary magazines and journals. Eventually she moved to New Orleans, and worked at the Times-Picayune. She became interested in longer forms of writing—novels and short stories—through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, and published her first novel in 1929.
Bristow reached the pinnacle of her career with the western romance Jubilee Trail, which became a bestseller in 1950, and was adapted to a moderately successful film in 1954.
Bristow reached the pinnacle of her career with the western romance Jubilee Trail, which became a bestseller in 1950, and was adapted to a moderately successful film in 1954.
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March 17, 2019
Note, March 16, 2019: I've just added substantially to this review, to include my reflections after a second read nearly 50 years after the first.
I read this trilogy in an omnibus volume (1970 is a rough, but probably close, guess as to the read date), and am reviewing it the same way, as a unit. It does, though, consist of three novels, all set in Louisiana, and focusing around one plantation: Deep Summer (1937), The Handsome Road (1938), and This Side of Glory (1940). Although the last novel is actually set in the author's own time, I've classified the trilogy as historical fiction, because she was telling a story that covers mostly historical time, and brings it down to her own day to show the relationship of the past to the present. (Her fellow historical novelist Norah Lofts also not infrequently told centuries-spanning tales carried down to her present.)
Gwen Bristow (1903-1980) was a native Southerner, born in South Carolina, apparently spent most of her life in the South (though she went to college at Columbia Univ.), and set her fiction mostly there, although this is the only part of her work that I've read so far. Like a number of other authors, she got her start in writing as a journalist, in her case for the New Orleans-based Times-Picayune, which led to a long residence in Louisiana. Deep Summer begins in the late 1700s, when Louisiana was under Spanish rule but Americans were beginning to settle there, and continues into the early 1800s. The Handsome Road focuses mainly on the Civil War and Reconstruction. This Side of Glory begins in the early 1900s, and carries the story down to the years just after World War I.
Since the 1960s, American historical fiction set in the South has tended to focus entirely on slavery and segregation, with race relations regarded as the only meaningful prism through which to view Southern history. Bristow, however, wrote at a time when the subject matter and authorial concerns could still be more varied. Obviously, race relations, and particularly the pernicious effects of slavery, aren't ignored in a trilogy set on a plantation founded on slave labor. Stephen Douglas' private comment about the institution --"A curse, an unmitigated curse, for the white race as well as for the black!"--could practically serve as an epigraph here, as we see the exploitation (including sexual exploitation) of blacks by their masters, and the kinds of tragic behaviors that the "peculiar institution" directly causes. (The conclusion that it tended to corrupt anything that it touched is pretty much inescapable.) But Bristow's main focus is on the relations between the white planter aristocracy and the poor whites, depicted through the interactions over the decades between the wealthy, imtermarried Larne and Sheramy families with the poor white Upjohns. (And no, they aren't "poor white trash," though the aristocrats usually think they are.)
Our major characters here are mostly all white (with the exception of Benjie in Deep Summer), and Bristow's protagonists all share her own gender: Judith Sheramy in the first book, Corrie Mae Upjohn in The Handsome Road, and Eleanor Upjohn in the last book. The style is Realist, but written with good taste, without explicit sex and without wallowing in bad language. (You will encounter some use of the n-word for blacks, which sadly reflects realistically the way many, and probably most, whites in both North and South actually talked in those times.) Bristow's prose is serviceable, her plotting and storytelling held my interest throughout, and her characterizations are sharp and believable. Most of these characters are not, to be sure, particularly likable, and I didn't appreciate their behavior in many cases. (The author wasn't going for evoking appreciation, but for making them understandable.) Without engaging in any spoilers, the trilogy's ultimate message is upbeat and optimistic, looking ahead to an era of greater equalitarianism and class reconciliation. (Knowledge of Southern history since 1940 might lead one to view this with less optimism, though.)
Reflections after a second read:
Usually, after other people have "liked" one of my reviews, I hesitate to modify it substantially; and I very rarely reread books, especially if I've already reviewed them here. In this case, though, a Goodreads friend whose judgment I respect read the trilogy because of my positive review and was much less positive in his comments. So I wanted to read it again, after a lapse of nearly 50 years, to see if my more mature perspective and tastes would lead me to devalue it. I fully expected that to be the case! On the contrary, however, I felt my perceptions changing, but in the direction of greater appreciation rather than less. So I felt justified in adding to the review to incorporate the new perspectives, hoping that I won't write anything that would cause anyone to "unlike" it. (It's also relevant to note that both times I read this, I read it in the 1962 omnibus edition, which incorporates the author's introductory comments, written just for that edition, on all three novels, explaining how they came to be written, along with her historical and thematic reflections; these are useful for understanding where she's coming from. My friend reviewed the three novels of the trilogy separately, and I'm assuming read them that way.)
The main individual criticisms my friend had of the books all center around a common theme: the handling of slavery and racial inequality. He perceived an overly positive view of slavery, and "a complete lack of understanding of the struggle of black men and women in the South." (Other criticisms were directed at the use of the n-word, which I mentioned above, and the also pejorative term "darkies," and the depiction of blacks exclusively in servant or laborer roles.)
Before addressing specific issues, it's well to establish, in a general way, that (also as noted above) the author's concern and focus here is white-centric. That's NOT precisely the same thing as anti-black, any more than Alex Haley's black-centric perspective in Roots is "anti-white" as such. Neither one of them purports to be supplying a comprehensive analysis of every aspect of 1773-1920 Southern society and history, nor as novelists are they obliged to; they're providing a distinctly limited perspective, through the lens of certain groups (and in the case of both writers, solely or partly of marginalized groups). What I wrote above about Benji being the only major (or at least significant) black character isn't strictly true (I'd forgotten the significant roles played by Angelique, and by Fred and Liza); but it's true that Bristow's viewpoint characters are all white, and see things through a white lens, as she did herself. The comment that "Eleanor had observed before now that Negroes knew a great deal more about white people than white people knew about Negroes" is revealing, and not only about the characters; Bristow herself probably knew that she didn't have enough knowledge of blacks to attempt to write from their perspective.
In that light, the slave-owning Larne and Sheramy planters' perception that their slaves are contented, and that the one violent slave uprising in the book was all caused by one malcontent, is not necessarily Bristow's perception, or the reader's. Yes, on the spectrum of plantation regimes of that day, theirs is at the high end (though we do get some revealing glimpses of the low end!); their slaves are treated relatively better than some others. Plantations like this did exist; and in fact slaves not uncommonly did "celebrat[e] family events" with the master's family, and house slaves did sometimes form friendships of sorts with their white owners and feel a certain identification with the family. But as Bristow writes in the introduction to Deep Summer, "The Negroes who spent their days in affectionate intimacy with their white folks were a small percentage of the whole. Most slaves had no such luck. The way of life demonstrated by the beauty of Natchez was a lovely flower rooted in dark and ugly soil." Even on plantations like Ardeith and Silverwood, the blacks are still exploited involuntary laborers worked without pay; and the fact that most of them were resigned to that situation doesn't mean they relished it. And yes, slaves historically did sing in the fields, as manual laborers often have done to make the work go better. But these weren't necessarily "happy songs," as my Goodreads friend characterized them; the lyrics tended to be more ambiguous, and the one plantation song quoted in the book is no exception.
In the one case where master-slave sex relations occur, my Goodreads friend felt that the fact that it was "consensual" amounted to a denial that rapes of slave women ever occurred. IMO, the later reference to "breeding farms" for blacks (which historically existed) would militate against that conclusion. But even the "consensual" sex here was hardly truly consensual, and not something the woman actually wanted or initiated; it was entirely a product of an unequal power relationship that she couldn't leave. (Even if she had been a salaried employee today, it would be recognized as sexual harassment.) I would also deny that Bristow portrays the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klansmen as "heroes." The very limited reference to their role is as operators of clandestine cotton gins, at a time when the Federal government collected a crippling tax on all cotton legally ginned. (Corrie Mae also comments on their dressing in sheets to scare the blacks.) This doesn't, to my mind, make them heroes; Bristow is no Alex Haley, but she's not Thomas Dixon, either. The view of Reconstruction here, again, is not comprehensive, or meant to be. But it does reflect what I would regard, based on nonfiction history that I've read, as a reality that for many agents of Reconstruction, as much as for the planters before them, blacks existed simply as things to be exploited for whatever wealth and power they could get out of them, not as fellow human beings who deserved fair treatment; and that a lot of Reconstruction policy, at least at the local levels, were often deliberately designed to exacerbate racial tensions rather than to create racial reconciliation, which then and now was what the country desperately needed. (I don't think it would be erroneous to see Reconstruction as a botched opportunity, though Bristow's purpose in the novel isn't to analyze Reconstruction.)
Pejorative ethnic terms for any racial group are, obviously, offensive. They've also historically been pervasive in common speech. In real life, as in Bristow's dialogue here, the n-word in the times she's depicting was a practically universal term for blacks in the mouth of speakers in both North and South; not only Northern soldiers used it, but blacks used it themselves, as both groups do here. It was common enough that many speakers probably used it simply as a neutral ethnic term, with no conscious insulting intent. (It's also true that while terms like "black," "white girl," or "white woman" are perfectly innocuous on paper, depending on the way that they're spoken, they can be deliberately slurring --and are used that way here in places.) Writers like Twain and Faulkner, depicting Southern speech contemporary with Bristow's setting, use it for realism. I don't think writers who use it in that fashion should necessarily be blamed for the reality they're depicting. Finally, in the white characters' social world depicted here, the only roles they were ever apt to see blacks in was as servants or laborers --the fact that most blacks simply weren't allowed any opportunity to be anything else was part of the social reality they've had to struggle against. (I suspect that Bristow, as a newspaper reporter, was quite well aware of that.)
While rereading the book, however, I picked up more than simply analyzing it for slavery-related or race-related themes. Much of it I'd forgotten, so it was like reading a new book. Some of what I'd largely forgotten, or never fully appreciated 50 years ago, was the depth of Bristow's psychological understanding of human behavior, and her capacity for enormously life-like, three-dimensional, nuanced characterizations of flawed, fully human characters. (In my original review, I said that most of her characters aren't particularly likable, but that's not true --a lot of their behavior at times isn't very likable, and you may want to yell at them; but you can still fully understand them, sympathize with them, like them and care about them.) It's a very immersive read, that brings to life another place and time; the depiction of the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic and of a devastating Mississippi River flood --I could relate, having lively memories of the great flood of 1965 in my home town-- are particularly powerful. Bristow brings a real moral dimension to her writing; and she manages to evoke the emotional power of Romantic fiction with a Realist style. I've decided that, after this reread, I can't rate this at less than five stars.
I read this trilogy in an omnibus volume (1970 is a rough, but probably close, guess as to the read date), and am reviewing it the same way, as a unit. It does, though, consist of three novels, all set in Louisiana, and focusing around one plantation: Deep Summer (1937), The Handsome Road (1938), and This Side of Glory (1940). Although the last novel is actually set in the author's own time, I've classified the trilogy as historical fiction, because she was telling a story that covers mostly historical time, and brings it down to her own day to show the relationship of the past to the present. (Her fellow historical novelist Norah Lofts also not infrequently told centuries-spanning tales carried down to her present.)
Gwen Bristow (1903-1980) was a native Southerner, born in South Carolina, apparently spent most of her life in the South (though she went to college at Columbia Univ.), and set her fiction mostly there, although this is the only part of her work that I've read so far. Like a number of other authors, she got her start in writing as a journalist, in her case for the New Orleans-based Times-Picayune, which led to a long residence in Louisiana. Deep Summer begins in the late 1700s, when Louisiana was under Spanish rule but Americans were beginning to settle there, and continues into the early 1800s. The Handsome Road focuses mainly on the Civil War and Reconstruction. This Side of Glory begins in the early 1900s, and carries the story down to the years just after World War I.
Since the 1960s, American historical fiction set in the South has tended to focus entirely on slavery and segregation, with race relations regarded as the only meaningful prism through which to view Southern history. Bristow, however, wrote at a time when the subject matter and authorial concerns could still be more varied. Obviously, race relations, and particularly the pernicious effects of slavery, aren't ignored in a trilogy set on a plantation founded on slave labor. Stephen Douglas' private comment about the institution --"A curse, an unmitigated curse, for the white race as well as for the black!"--could practically serve as an epigraph here, as we see the exploitation (including sexual exploitation) of blacks by their masters, and the kinds of tragic behaviors that the "peculiar institution" directly causes. (The conclusion that it tended to corrupt anything that it touched is pretty much inescapable.) But Bristow's main focus is on the relations between the white planter aristocracy and the poor whites, depicted through the interactions over the decades between the wealthy, imtermarried Larne and Sheramy families with the poor white Upjohns. (And no, they aren't "poor white trash," though the aristocrats usually think they are.)
Our major characters here are mostly all white (with the exception of Benjie in Deep Summer), and Bristow's protagonists all share her own gender: Judith Sheramy in the first book, Corrie Mae Upjohn in The Handsome Road, and Eleanor Upjohn in the last book. The style is Realist, but written with good taste, without explicit sex and without wallowing in bad language. (You will encounter some use of the n-word for blacks, which sadly reflects realistically the way many, and probably most, whites in both North and South actually talked in those times.) Bristow's prose is serviceable, her plotting and storytelling held my interest throughout, and her characterizations are sharp and believable. Most of these characters are not, to be sure, particularly likable, and I didn't appreciate their behavior in many cases. (The author wasn't going for evoking appreciation, but for making them understandable.) Without engaging in any spoilers, the trilogy's ultimate message is upbeat and optimistic, looking ahead to an era of greater equalitarianism and class reconciliation. (Knowledge of Southern history since 1940 might lead one to view this with less optimism, though.)
Reflections after a second read:
Usually, after other people have "liked" one of my reviews, I hesitate to modify it substantially; and I very rarely reread books, especially if I've already reviewed them here. In this case, though, a Goodreads friend whose judgment I respect read the trilogy because of my positive review and was much less positive in his comments. So I wanted to read it again, after a lapse of nearly 50 years, to see if my more mature perspective and tastes would lead me to devalue it. I fully expected that to be the case! On the contrary, however, I felt my perceptions changing, but in the direction of greater appreciation rather than less. So I felt justified in adding to the review to incorporate the new perspectives, hoping that I won't write anything that would cause anyone to "unlike" it. (It's also relevant to note that both times I read this, I read it in the 1962 omnibus edition, which incorporates the author's introductory comments, written just for that edition, on all three novels, explaining how they came to be written, along with her historical and thematic reflections; these are useful for understanding where she's coming from. My friend reviewed the three novels of the trilogy separately, and I'm assuming read them that way.)
The main individual criticisms my friend had of the books all center around a common theme: the handling of slavery and racial inequality. He perceived an overly positive view of slavery, and "a complete lack of understanding of the struggle of black men and women in the South." (Other criticisms were directed at the use of the n-word, which I mentioned above, and the also pejorative term "darkies," and the depiction of blacks exclusively in servant or laborer roles.)
Before addressing specific issues, it's well to establish, in a general way, that (also as noted above) the author's concern and focus here is white-centric. That's NOT precisely the same thing as anti-black, any more than Alex Haley's black-centric perspective in Roots is "anti-white" as such. Neither one of them purports to be supplying a comprehensive analysis of every aspect of 1773-1920 Southern society and history, nor as novelists are they obliged to; they're providing a distinctly limited perspective, through the lens of certain groups (and in the case of both writers, solely or partly of marginalized groups). What I wrote above about Benji being the only major (or at least significant) black character isn't strictly true (I'd forgotten the significant roles played by Angelique, and by Fred and Liza); but it's true that Bristow's viewpoint characters are all white, and see things through a white lens, as she did herself. The comment that "Eleanor had observed before now that Negroes knew a great deal more about white people than white people knew about Negroes" is revealing, and not only about the characters; Bristow herself probably knew that she didn't have enough knowledge of blacks to attempt to write from their perspective.
In that light, the slave-owning Larne and Sheramy planters' perception that their slaves are contented, and that the one violent slave uprising in the book was all caused by one malcontent, is not necessarily Bristow's perception, or the reader's. Yes, on the spectrum of plantation regimes of that day, theirs is at the high end (though we do get some revealing glimpses of the low end!); their slaves are treated relatively better than some others. Plantations like this did exist; and in fact slaves not uncommonly did "celebrat[e] family events" with the master's family, and house slaves did sometimes form friendships of sorts with their white owners and feel a certain identification with the family. But as Bristow writes in the introduction to Deep Summer, "The Negroes who spent their days in affectionate intimacy with their white folks were a small percentage of the whole. Most slaves had no such luck. The way of life demonstrated by the beauty of Natchez was a lovely flower rooted in dark and ugly soil." Even on plantations like Ardeith and Silverwood, the blacks are still exploited involuntary laborers worked without pay; and the fact that most of them were resigned to that situation doesn't mean they relished it. And yes, slaves historically did sing in the fields, as manual laborers often have done to make the work go better. But these weren't necessarily "happy songs," as my Goodreads friend characterized them; the lyrics tended to be more ambiguous, and the one plantation song quoted in the book is no exception.
In the one case where master-slave sex relations occur, my Goodreads friend felt that the fact that it was "consensual" amounted to a denial that rapes of slave women ever occurred. IMO, the later reference to "breeding farms" for blacks (which historically existed) would militate against that conclusion. But even the "consensual" sex here was hardly truly consensual, and not something the woman actually wanted or initiated; it was entirely a product of an unequal power relationship that she couldn't leave. (Even if she had been a salaried employee today, it would be recognized as sexual harassment.) I would also deny that Bristow portrays the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klansmen as "heroes." The very limited reference to their role is as operators of clandestine cotton gins, at a time when the Federal government collected a crippling tax on all cotton legally ginned. (Corrie Mae also comments on their dressing in sheets to scare the blacks.) This doesn't, to my mind, make them heroes; Bristow is no Alex Haley, but she's not Thomas Dixon, either. The view of Reconstruction here, again, is not comprehensive, or meant to be. But it does reflect what I would regard, based on nonfiction history that I've read, as a reality that for many agents of Reconstruction, as much as for the planters before them, blacks existed simply as things to be exploited for whatever wealth and power they could get out of them, not as fellow human beings who deserved fair treatment; and that a lot of Reconstruction policy, at least at the local levels, were often deliberately designed to exacerbate racial tensions rather than to create racial reconciliation, which then and now was what the country desperately needed. (I don't think it would be erroneous to see Reconstruction as a botched opportunity, though Bristow's purpose in the novel isn't to analyze Reconstruction.)
Pejorative ethnic terms for any racial group are, obviously, offensive. They've also historically been pervasive in common speech. In real life, as in Bristow's dialogue here, the n-word in the times she's depicting was a practically universal term for blacks in the mouth of speakers in both North and South; not only Northern soldiers used it, but blacks used it themselves, as both groups do here. It was common enough that many speakers probably used it simply as a neutral ethnic term, with no conscious insulting intent. (It's also true that while terms like "black," "white girl," or "white woman" are perfectly innocuous on paper, depending on the way that they're spoken, they can be deliberately slurring --and are used that way here in places.) Writers like Twain and Faulkner, depicting Southern speech contemporary with Bristow's setting, use it for realism. I don't think writers who use it in that fashion should necessarily be blamed for the reality they're depicting. Finally, in the white characters' social world depicted here, the only roles they were ever apt to see blacks in was as servants or laborers --the fact that most blacks simply weren't allowed any opportunity to be anything else was part of the social reality they've had to struggle against. (I suspect that Bristow, as a newspaper reporter, was quite well aware of that.)
While rereading the book, however, I picked up more than simply analyzing it for slavery-related or race-related themes. Much of it I'd forgotten, so it was like reading a new book. Some of what I'd largely forgotten, or never fully appreciated 50 years ago, was the depth of Bristow's psychological understanding of human behavior, and her capacity for enormously life-like, three-dimensional, nuanced characterizations of flawed, fully human characters. (In my original review, I said that most of her characters aren't particularly likable, but that's not true --a lot of their behavior at times isn't very likable, and you may want to yell at them; but you can still fully understand them, sympathize with them, like them and care about them.) It's a very immersive read, that brings to life another place and time; the depiction of the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic and of a devastating Mississippi River flood --I could relate, having lively memories of the great flood of 1965 in my home town-- are particularly powerful. Bristow brings a real moral dimension to her writing; and she manages to evoke the emotional power of Romantic fiction with a Realist style. I've decided that, after this reread, I can't rate this at less than five stars.
February 25, 2010
The first book of The Plantation Trilogy (Deep Summer, The Handsome Road, and This Side of Glory) was published in 1937, a year after the publication of Gone With the Wind. The multi-generational story begins in pre-Revolutionary War Louisiana and finishes after World War I. The author, Gwen Bristow, is particularly interested in the plight of poor whites. I really liked her analysis of cultural and economic conditions in Louisiana.
July 25, 2009
Books of my childhood. They may not hold up but they're the books that made me, so I honor them. I really loved these books dearly.
March 22, 2011
LOVED. Deep Summer took my heart, The Handsome Road has even more in depth characters. Hard to say which book was my favorite, I recommend to anyone who loves Southern Historical Fiction
May 16, 2011
I really enjoyed this trilogy. I especially enjoy the historical aspect--I loved reading about how people lived and the effects of the wars, etc. on their daily lives. It was long--somewhere near 800 or 900 pages, but I liked it.
April 28, 2012
Read these as a young woman and have re-read them twice since.
August 9, 2017
This is of course three books in one as indicated by the title. If I reviewed each by itself I would give the first book, Deep Summer, two stars, the second, The Handsome Road, one star and the third, This Side of Glory, four stars. The series is very much a product of it's time and most of my difficulty and disturbance with the books is in the treatment of the black people. In the first book the author treats what was essentially rape, given the power dynamics of the situation, as if it were a consensual affair. In the second she repeatedly enforces the idea that "poor white trash" had things much harder than slaves, which while it may have been materially true in a few select situations rather ignores the larger picture. And in the third book blacks are mostly ignored and pushed aside only showing up in the roles of servants or hired help. I liked the history revealed in the books despite this. Deep Summer is a story of the beginnings of white civilization in Louisiana plantation country, things I had not learned about before like Moss houses and indigo planting. The second takes place throughout the American Civil war and Reconstruction period. In both of these books I didn't really like the characters much which affected my view of the stories. But in the third book, which takes place during the World War I, I really loved the story of Kester and Eleanor. I liked both of them and wanted very much for them to succeed.
Popsugar 2017: a book that is more than 800 pages.
Popsugar 2017: a book that is more than 800 pages.
May 8, 2022
Southern Historical Fiction Worth Rereading
I read Deep Summer as a teenager and was fascinated with life in the deep south , especially on the plantation. This go around I read the other two novels as well. The contrasts of the owners and slaves, the contrast between the classes in white society, and the contrast of the slave compared to white trash. Another fascinating difference was the attitude of plantation owners who worked their way rich as opposed to those who were born intro it.
I read Deep Summer as a teenager and was fascinated with life in the deep south , especially on the plantation. This go around I read the other two novels as well. The contrasts of the owners and slaves, the contrast between the classes in white society, and the contrast of the slave compared to white trash. Another fascinating difference was the attitude of plantation owners who worked their way rich as opposed to those who were born intro it.
April 8, 2016
This book makes "Gone With the Wind" seems like a fairytale. The realism the author portrayed, the believable characters and the plot made me feel like I had stepped back in time to the 1800's. I was sorry to have the story end.
I read the book 50 years ago. When I reread it years later, I found it very fresh and relevant.
I read the book 50 years ago. When I reread it years later, I found it very fresh and relevant.
August 23, 2008
I really enjoyed these three novels. The first starts in the pre-civil war era and the last ends just after WWI, so you get a glimpse of a good portion of history throughout them, and it is interesting to see how things and people changed throughout that time period.
Read
August 2, 2012Love the author beautiful. Book!
February 7, 2018
Read this some time ago. This trilogy is still in the top ten of books I have read.
March 11, 2013
Plantation Trilogy
April 24, 2013
Loved it!
March 30, 2016
Happened upon this through Bookbub and was so glad I did. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
June 19, 2012
I love Gwen's style of writing! Great books, I couldn't put them down!
September 20, 2017
These three novels are historical fiction about the South at its best. I was in the middle of the second book before discovering they were written in 1937 - 1940, but they hold up well. The settlers along the Mississippi River in Louisiana were given land grants by King George III for fighting with the British in the French and Indian Wars. The land grants set the stage for plantations along the river in the late 1700s. I learned a lot about plantation life, the development of cotton and even the engineering of leeves to hold back a mighty river. It was interesting to follow the families through many generstions to post-WWI.
February 20, 2018
These books were so good! The stories were fascinating while giving the reader a deeper understanding of so much history. Louisiana before it was part of the US, the brave men and women who settled there, the relationships between slave owners and slaves, the poor whites and how they felt, the people of the South as they adjusted to life without slaves and the aftermath of the war. As a busy mom it took me a little time to read all 3 but I was sad to have them come to an end.
August 2, 2020
Moving multi-generational family historical saga....lots of interesting characters and a good mix of good and bad people and situations....some of it was very predictable in terms of plot, but I did enjoy reading because of my fascination with historical novels. The final chapter was a very interesting banter between two characters who came to know themselves as well as each other and all that bound their relationship,
September 14, 2017
I remember enjoying these books very much. I read the trilogy at least 30 years ago. I first read Jubilee Trail by Gwen Bristow after seeing the movie based on her novel. After re-reading Gone with the Wind for the 5th or 6th time I stumbled upon the Plantation Trilogy at my grandmother's home in Mississippi. I would really like to read them again, if I can find them!
April 2, 2023
My read this when she was pregnant in 1940
I re-read these books after nearly 50 years. My 3 daughters have them as well. So much to be learned about the heritage of The South. Times change but good books remain ever true. Ms Bristow is long dad but her books lives on if only someone takes them from the shelf.
I re-read these books after nearly 50 years. My 3 daughters have them as well. So much to be learned about the heritage of The South. Times change but good books remain ever true. Ms Bristow is long dad but her books lives on if only someone takes them from the shelf.
February 13, 2018
First two volumes we're great. Last one was somewhat frustrating because of too many surprise developments. It seemed to drag on too long and some of the plot seemed poorly connected to previous events.
March 15, 2020
Absolutely loved this. If you enjoy rich,dense, multigenerational sagas peopled with characters you can't help being interested in, plus little explored historical periods and viewpoints, then you too will enjoy this one.
September 10, 2017
My kind of read
This trilogy goes deep into lives of our ancestors, which is my fave setting. The descriptions of places, dress style all fit and are eloquently described.
This trilogy goes deep into lives of our ancestors, which is my fave setting. The descriptions of places, dress style all fit and are eloquently described.
September 21, 2017
Loved this trilogy-an historical, generation-and social class-spanning story of strength, love, and legacy.
November 8, 2017
I enjoyed this trilogy and have a new perspective on periods of American history. I plan to read more of her books (soon).
February 6, 2018
I read these multiple times in Junior High. When I saw they were available on Kindle, I downloaded them and hope to read them again so see if they still hold their charm for me.
March 10, 2018
Good Book
Very good book. I always did like books about the old South. I would recommend this book to family members and friends
Very good book. I always did like books about the old South. I would recommend this book to family members and friends
March 3, 2018
One of my favorite family trilogies
October 14, 2018
This series of books of 3 was a fantastic read Loved it. Full of factual information and it was written just like I imagined the old South was and I think you would too.
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