Windswept

Maine novels #3

by Mary Ellen Chase

The third of Mary Ellen Chase's Maine novels (following Mary Peters and Silas Crockett), Windswept is the romantic and tumultuous saga of a Maine family who makes its home Down East. Spanning six decades, starting in the late nineteenth century, the novel depicts their lives as they meet head on the joys and challenges of the changing and encroaching world and eventually, World War II. Through it all, their home provides the family with a safe haven in which to sink their roots as they strive to nurture their humanity and spirituality, all the while surrounded by the natural beauty of the Maine coast. Windswept was a national bestseller and the biggest seller of Chase's career.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

American educator, teacher, scholar, and author regarded as one of the most important regional literary figures of the early twentieth century.

Mary Ellen Chase received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota where she served as an assistant professor from 1922 to 1926. She taught at Smith College starting in 1926 until her retirement in 1955.

Chase wrote more than 30 books, many using her cherished Maine heritage as the setting, capturing the unique spirit and chronicling a way of life for generations. Her most famous of these works include Mary Peters, Silas Crockett, Windswept, and Edge of Darkness.

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While in Maine, we wandered into an independent bookstore while meandering through one of the picturesque small towns that dot the coast. On a whim, I bought this book by Mary Ellen Chase and proceeded to read it. The book was published in 1941 and tells the story of 3 generations of a family who made their home Down East (not the clothes store, a region of coastal northern Maine). The book tells the story of the family's trials, triumphs and tragedies juxtaposed with current events. The book also offers a glimpse into Native New Englander's mindset, especially towards the wave of immigrants that settled in the North East during the late 19th and early 20th century.
The land is a central part of the book also. The author, a native of Maine, obviously loves where she grew up and portrays the area and it's people with a realistic but also somewhat idealistic.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Marsten - a sailor - buys a majestic plot of land while sailing around Maine in the 1880s. He builds a beautiful house he names Windswept that becomes the ancestral seat of the very prominent Maine family. This is the story of the Marsten family, covering from the 1880s to the beginning of World War II. I enjoyed this story although it was a little longwinded. I generally like books about houses and family relationships. I give it an A+!

[Trish Remley · Rating 4 out of 5]

When in Maine I always read something that takes place in Maine. I could relate to all the wonderful description of the Maine coast, flora, and fauna. The story of the characters throughout the generations of this family homeplace - Windswept - included all the aspects of a good story and a true life - joy, tragedy, heartbreak,etc.

[Lydia Therese]

I picked up this book for a couple of bucks at an antique store. It still had its original dust jacket, and the cover art was beautiful and intrigued me. Upon further research, I learned this book is a family saga of three generations living at the same house in Down East Maine. I am from New England myself, and I also have a love for this part of the States and the Maine coastland. So, I was excited to give it a try.

Unfortunately, I got about sixty pages through before I decided to DNF. The book begins with the first generation of the family and how they acquired the land and built the house of Windswept. The problem is the book goes through every minute detail of how they got the land and their plans for building the house, etc. This would be fine briefly, but it's pages and pages of telling you what the characters are doing with little to no dialogue. This makes the story drag a lot.

The book is also extremely wordy. The author tops Dickens in her way of saying things in five sentences that could be said in one. She also LOVES her adjectives and she often includes several that mean the same thing. For example:
"The place to many might have seemed desolate, bleak and barren enough, sinister, sullen, even foreboding, especially in November."
She could just say "The place may have seemed desolate, and perhaps even a little foreboding, especially in November." She does this with most of her sentences and you can see how that would get old quickly.

I tried to get through it to see if there would be more of an interesting plot I could get invested in, especially since there were some beautiful descriptions of Maine that I really enjoyed, but sixty pages in I'm not enjoying it and I don't think it's worth it to continue. I can see why this book has largely remained out of print since it was first published. It was apparently a bestseller during its time, but it's quite dated now. Definitely not a classic.

DNF

P.S. Here is a description of Maine from the book I particularly enjoyed: "Today the snow is deep there and, according to this morning's weather report, the cold intense and bitter. Today the blueberry fields are discernable only as white mounds tumbling steadily downward toward the wooded point three miles eastward from the house . . . Today the sea is purplish gray; surf foams like thick suds about the treeless islands; the distant summit of Cadillac cuts the western sky, sharp and keen as a new knife blade . . ."

[Susan Emmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

A luminous novel that follows three generations of Marstons. The sweep and depth of Chase's writing is a marvel.
And I was also caught up in the Gardiner piece of the story since Marstons still populate the area.
To build a family of character, to travel and yet find a rooted home, to endure and to welcome everyone to your hearth including those not of your "class" or formal education level - all good reason to read this 1941 novel that still speaks to those living with AppleX phones and Siri calendars.
Chase knew how to picture and capture the land and people she loved.

Granddaughter Anna at 46:

I'd like to liver forever, just as I am now...Not young like Rod and Julie. Heavens, no! Not facing all the bewilderment and suffering and confusion they're bound to fact, but going on with these things, having them already a part of me, suffering, perhaps, but not stunned anymore, waiting, working for a new world.
There have probably been other generations with the gifts of my own...but I don't know of them. The women of my generation - what we've had handed out to us! An old world and a new! An old world of horses and country schools, kerosene lamps and even a relative orthodoxy, stability, peace, complacency, Browing, God's in His heaven! Then the catapulting into a new world, with humour enough to keep one's head, curiosity enough not to get bitter, excitement enough not to go yearning after the past. And now this grim descent into an older past of blood and tears, greed and cruelty, forged with new weapons. Young people not knowing where they are in their minds, brought up on sentimental unrealities on the one hand, and, on the other, with too much of Mammon, needing understanding, faith.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chase's epic family drama, set on the Maine coast, is a love letter to the landscape and the various people of all kinds who she saw making their homes here over the course of generations. Her prose is sweeping, gorgeous - full of reverence for nature and for humanity. The characters, while they may feel somewhat flat by today's standards, are archetypal in a way that almost reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Chase's talent for setting the scene and drawing out the interest in every twist and turn of the whims of fate and history is really remarkable. I'll definitely be reading more of her work!

[Pam Kirst · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book at a library cast-off event, and I'm glad I read it; I'll read more of Chase's work as it comes to hand. Musing on place in fiction and place in an author's work...

https://wordpress.com/post/pamkirst20...

[Julia Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into a time past and full of Maine’s natural beauty, which I adore. I found some parts a bit slow and/or random, but I also found it to be full of universal truths.

[Cara Crowley]

I really loved the use of language and really enjoyed the setting.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

My desert longings are satisfied; now off to the wild coast of Maine, also longed-for travel during the "long stay at home". I'm indeed feeling 'windswept', with visions of wild coastal Maine in my dreams.

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it's an unlikely novel to inspire a Master's thesis, this novel did inspire mine. This, the third of Chase's Maine novels, has a luminous quality about it, more poignant when set against the grim background of WWII. Chase worried that her novel wouldn't live up to its title's "Pentecostal connotations," but, in my opinion it does. The story is rooted in place perhaps more than in characters, and the place is heavy with Spirit: wind, water, flaming fall foliage. The multi-generational story set in this spirit-drenched place carries the reader from the prosperous 1880s to the eve of the Second World War. Chase registers the tumultuous changes of those years in her novel, but nonetheless maintains a note of peace and hope in the face of that darkness.

This hope no doubt accounts for the novel's best-seller status in the years immediately following its publication, while its conventionality and Christian outlook account for its failure to endure among the ranks of academically-acclaimed "literature."

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure I'll make it all the way through this book. It is gothic in its narrative approach. Not a lot of action, but a lot of description, which I usually like. But the author has a heavy voice throughout and it is slow going.

Updated:
I've decided to not finish this book. It's style is too ponderous for me, although the writing is eloquent. The story does not move very fast and I could never get interested in any of the characters.

[Lfoster · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I travel, I pick up books connected in some way to the place where I am staying. This was one of those books, and I loved it. If you read Joy's review below, you will see almost exactly what I would have written. My husband read it after me, and was also greatly moved by it's quiet beauty.