Judith Lankester

The Lankester Family #1

by Marjorie Hill Allee, Hattie Longstreet Price (Illustrator)

Judith Lankester, fifteen years old, and raised in the luxury of her grandmother’s Virginia plantation, has made the arduous journey with her widowed mother and her seven sisters to the home of her grandparents in Indiana. Though her mother, Charity, had married away from the Quaker lifestyle, she had always maintained her faith and convictions. After her husband’s death, she freed his slaves, settled them on their own land and used the last of the family’s resources to travel to Indiana. Welcomed in Grandfather Halloway’s home, Charity hopes to set up her loom and begin weaving cloth to sell. The older girls—all except for Judith—also wish to help. The rawness of the pioneer dwellings and way of life offend Judith’s love of beauty and refinement. She wants to return to the silk and elegance of her grandmother’s home. Except for her gift with young children and skill in fine sewing, she has nothing to contribute to their new way of life. At Grandfather Halloway’s suggestion, she goes to live with the Huff family to help out, but also to learn practical household skills. It is in this kindly crucible that Judith must come to terms with herself, with her family’s Quaker faith and convictions—especially on the subject of slavery—and of where, and with whom, she will spend her future years. This warm, believable tale about the meaning of freedom and its responsibility is vividly set against the background of social and industrial change in the 1840’s—in the period leading up to the American Civil War.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

217 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

This children's author grew up on an Indiana farm in a community of Quakers whose ancestors had migrated northward from the Carolinas to escape the environment of slavery. At the age of eighteen, having completed high school and two years at Earlham College, Allee taught all eight grades in the one-room school which she had attended as a child. The following year she enrolled at the University of Chicago, determined to become a writer.

Between 1929 and 1945 Allee published 14 novels for older juvenile readers. Her characters are usually young women just beginning to confront the personal discords and social problems of adult life. It is believed that Winter's Mischief was based on the Westtown School in Pennsylvania.

Working from memoirs and personal histories, Allee wrote six novels depicting Quaker families caught in the turmoil of changing values during the mid-19th century. These novels portray a vivid picture of American life between 1840 and 1875, and they present a multifaceted view of slavery.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the death of her father, sixteen-year-old Judith Lankester is removed from her wealthy grandmother's home, where she had spent most of her childhood in luxury, and moves with her mother and her seven sisters from Virginia to Indiana. Here, in a community of Quaker farmers, Judith discovers a very different kind of life. Sent to live with the Huff family, Judith learns about hard work, and although often unhappy, slowly comes to have an appreciation for her new home, and the people in it. She also slowly comes to understand their anti-slavery position, after accepting that practice in her old Virginia life. When a runaway slave and the fortunes of the Huff family are threatened, Judith sets out to do something about it, and to win the right to stay in this new home...

Set in 1841, Judith Lankester was originally published in 1930, was long out of print, and was then republished in 2014 by Bethlehem Books. It is the first of four novels about the Lankester family, and draws upon author Marjorie Hill Allee's own family background and history, growing up in a Quaker community in Indiana. It is the fourth of Allee's books I have read, following upon her Newbery Honor Book, Jane's Island ; her boarding school story, Winter's Mischief ; and her teen novel about girls studying science at the University of Chicago, The Great Tradition . All of those books were contemporaneously set, while this is a work of historical fiction, the first I have read in this genre from the author. On the whole I enjoyed it, but I did find it somewhat flawed, in comparison to some of the aforementioned books. I felt it took too long for the reader to become fully invested in Judith as a character, and thought the book was poorly structured. The narrative should either have begun on the Huff farm, I think, with any back story filled in through flash-back scenes, or it ought to have started at Grandmother Lakester's house, and truly shown Judith's transformation from the beginning. As it was, there was something disjointed about the way it all unfolded. I ended up liking it more than the friends with whom I read it, I think, and do intend to track down the next book, A House of Her Own , but I don't know that I would strongly recommend it, save to those who enjoy vintage children's fiction, or who are looking for children's stories about Quakers, or set in 19th-century Indiana.

Note: Potential readers should be aware that the n-word is used a number of times throughout the book.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not overly exciting, and a bit strange in the plot and writing in the beginning, but overall a clean book and a fun story of a girl learning to live the life of a quaker and farm-girl. I especially enjoyed reading of Judith's relationship with the little boy in the story and the way she brings life to the Huff family home where she moves to live. :)

[Michael Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of things that could be improved about this book. The first half of it is deadly boring and it does not grab the reader. There were many points at which I would have abandoned it.

Firstly, there are altogether too many characters, and they are poorly named. David, Denny, Dan, Duberry, Grandfather Halloway, Haydock, Henry Huff, Joseph John, Judith - were all the other letters taken? Then we have a cat named Sir Thomas Cat. But then we have to have twins with the names of Thomas Ellwood and Robert Barclay. (And why do these both get middle names - not to mention middle names that sound like last names?)

There is also the odd setup of families and characters. Apparently it wouldn't be good enough for Judith to go off to Indiana and live with her Quaker grandparents and be awkward with them. So they farm her out. The Huff family seems to exist to have a place for Judith to live and work, and that's fine, but then we still have Judith's actual family: Grandfather Joseph and Grandmother Charity Halloway who live in Indiana, mother Charity (her husband John is dead) and daughters Charity, Catherine, Phebe, Eunice, Martha, Ann, Polly, and Judith. We are introduced to all these, plus Uncle Jesse and his unnamed wife, only in the first chapter. And on the other side of the family we have Grandmother Lydia Lankester still in Virginia. Then we have to name Judith's doll, Melinda, just in case there weren't enough pointless names being thrown around. And Sukey and Duberry, two slaves. But guess what? We never hear of most of these people again! The first chapter is spent mostly just getting all the other daughters settled off in different places. Since we never hear about these sisters, they could have been left out entirely. Duberry plays a significant role, but Sukey is only referred to in passing twice later. Even damn Melinda only gets one last mention after being absent for 160 pages. In the Huff world, there are all sons (Daniel, Mark, Joseph John, twins Thomas Ellwood and Robert Barclay, and David) plus hired man Dennis O'Brien. Several of those sons could have been eliminated and/or consolidated. In terms of other characters, there is Jot Haydock, a bounder, and the lazy Lacy family, who are not named but who host a dance. Honestly, Haydock and Denny are both bad sorts, and the story could probably have been rewritten to merge them.

So we get chapter after chapter of deadly dull setup and introductions. But finally at chapter 7 (of 13), there is some action. It isn't tremendously captivating, but it's something. Then things proceed from there through the rest of the book and we get some conflict and some resolution. I wish that an editor could have pared down the first half of the book. Maybe some of the information could have been related in dialogue or remembered reflections, but instead it's just....told. Word after word, page after page, chapter after chapter. Allee is not a top quality writer who can produce sparkling prose with stunning description that makes your jaw drop in admiration. She mostly writes three sentences when one will do, and you yawn instead.

Anyway, some of the point of the story is how Judith grows and develops and learns to do normal work - you know, churning butter, sewing, cooking. (I don't think she ever does learn to swim or row a boat.) For that kind of domestic thing, I'd much rather read Understood Betsy. There is also an anti-slavery subplot, and there are better books about runaway slaves and the underground railroad and Quaker involvement. Then there is a kind of a treasure hunt, and well, one doesn't have to think hard to come up with much better books of that sort.

This is the first of four books in a series. I shall not be pursuing any of them.

[historyka_polska · Rating 2 out of 5]

I regret to say that I did not like the book. It was partly confusing and partly sad by turns, especially when the family is split up at the beginning. Judith was not an inspiring heroine, or even relatable; and if you have ever read They Loved to Laugh, and think that this story will resolve like it – I have to break it gently that it doesn’t. One of the more strange and disappointing parts is when the Huffs seems to recognize her inability to do any kind of housework (due to her upbringing with a rich grandmother), and promptly bundles her off to keep the family invalid company instead. That leads to a concerning question: I would like to know why a small boy who has been ill is staying in a completely different house?!🤔
The farmhand-sequence is simply plain strange, and I won’t even go into how I feel about the end of the book. Plainly put, it’s just another puzzling tangle to an already bewildering plot-line instead of a cohesive finish to the story.
All in all, it won’t harm you (or your children, I think) to read the book; but it is not satisfying or happy. I give my two stars with disturbing eagerness.