Second Growth

by Wallace Stegner

A New England village, untouched by history since the American Revolution, is the unquiet arena containing, but just barely, the aloof natives and the summer residents. Their paths cross, happily or disastrously, in a book that seems too real to be fiction. As Wallace Stegner writes, the conflict on this particular frontier "has been reproduced in an endlessly changing pattern all over the United States."

 

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Westwick, NH is a small New England village of narrow minded, strait - laced individuals for 8 months of every year, until summer months bring in the outside world to their lake front get-a-way cottages, looking for beautiful views and peace and quiet. The summer folk are educated types, college professors, doctors, lawyers, etc. The village only has 2 people who attended college. So there is a disconnect felt by everyone. The novel follows two of the lifelong villagers, and a Jewish couple new to the town. As always with Stegner, the language and descriptions are beautiful, and relationships and personalities are revealed a little at a time. There was a lesbian relationship and also anti-Semitism in this story, which surprised me since the book was published in 1947. Every time I entered these pages I fell into village life with these characters as though I were there. One of those books that I hated to read because every chapter meant I was that much closer to finishing.

The second chapter, "A Girl Named Leibowitz" had the most wonderful argument between two people I have ever read. The discussion centered on which was the most valuable and worthy way to spend your time; reading novels, or reading history and non-fiction.

Here's a sample. "What do you know about this country from reading novels?"
"I wouldn't attempt to tell you, because you wouldn't understand, Ruth said tartly. But anybody with any sense can learn more from novels than he can from any textbook in your box. Novels give you an understanding of people, they open your eyes to all kinds of things. Who do you think Sinclair Lewis is, some writer of children's books, maybe?"

Anyone who knows me knows whose side I was on, but the history reader made some good points too. This novel was a wonderful way to spend my time, in any case.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Second Growth: A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seconda...]

*

The meaning of the title was not evident to me until reflection upon finishing. Most of the novel is episodic and for the longest time doesn’t feel as if it’s going much of anywhere, except in describing the life and inhabitants of a rural New England village during the time its summer visitors have taken over.

I was reminded of William Maxwell’s Bright Center of Heaven in that it too deals with a community that seems to be most alive (for better and worse) during the summer only. A disfiguring accident late in the novel reminded me of Maxwell’s Time Will Darken It, also set in a small town. Both authors’ gentle prose likely evoked these comparisons.

With its intimations of same-sex love, and a few other themes that hint at a boldness somewhat surprising in this quiet work, I had to double-check the date of publication (1947). The prose in the last chapter elevated the work for me, as the pace of the words themselves, along with the perfect pathetic fallacy, conveys a changing mood and outlook on life as characters walk to their separate destinations, pointing toward their not necessarily inevitable ‘second growth’.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wallace Stegner paints a brilliant portrait of a rural New England village, placid and unchanging on the surface, but roiled with tension between two groups of its residents. The old time villagers farm and they've been at it for generations. The summer people come from the city to enjoy the coolness and quiet of the village. They are college professors, lawyers - educated people. Many year round villagers suffer quietly. There is a Jewish family that is not exactly shunned, but ignored by the villagers. There is a young man, a penniless orphan, with an opportunity to leave his home and venture into the academic world; a proposition that terrifies him. And there is a young schoolteacher whose education has only served to isolate her from her family and neighbors. These vivid characters and the astoundingly beautiful world that they occupy make this book an unforgettable experience.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are several things that stuck in my mind about this novel. I will admit, Stegner has not disappointed me; perhaps this is his most poignant of the three I have read. From the sweep of his Pulitzer Prize winning "Angle of Repose," the introspection of friendship in "Crossing to Safety" to the dissection of a small NE village in "Second Growth" I finish a Stegner work with a deep sense of satisfaction. This is a remarkable story in many aspects.

The novel is the story of Westwick, New Hampshire, a small village that American Progress has missed, told over one summer, by linking, through a series of short stories, the interactions between the locals and the summer people. Because it is a small place, unlike New York, Boston or New Haven where the summer people hail from, these interactions can be charming or disastrous, but whatever your perspective, the result is amazing. Woven throughout the novel is the struggle one local teenager deals with when faced with a decision to leave or stay. Despite the tragic events I felt relived by the outcome and if you read you will feel the same.

I used to be a "summer people," but am now a local. Westwick is Brandon, VT a small town where I live. And much of 20th century development has by-passed my little town. And we are lucky. I recognize this and feel very blessed - Vermont is very much like an au natural Disney World. Read the book. It is short, 240 pages but packed with powerful impact presented with powerful, but sensitive prose.

[Roxy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stegner never disappoints me. As much as his characterizations, I love his descriptions of nature, and of smells. In the wood shop, "the air was sweet with the smell of planed pine, the vinegar smell of oak, the richness of linseed oil." In the sewing room, "steam and scorch and beeswax and filler and cloth, good cloth." On a bright September day, "an effervescence in the air, no dust, no dampness, the sort of air that makes colts throw up heads and tails and run through pastures, the very bite and wine of life that searched the lungs and cleared the head."

[Lynne]

Everything by Wallace Stegner is a joy to read!

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strong 3 star. Published in 1947, this is an early Stegner novel that could be seen as a set of short stories that have a consistent plot and characters running — or rather slowly walking — through them.

Warwick, NH is a bygone farming community isolated nine months out of year. For the other three months of the year in summer, outsiders from cities and college towns move in. The summer residents enliven the town, but also create apprehension, unspoken divisions, and a window into the outside. When the outside actually comes to stay, such as Abe, who is Jewish and came to Warwick five years ago, he's an anomaly. Only his talkative persistence and tailoring enables him to be somewhat accepted and find a home outside of Russia. When Abe finds a kindred spirit, you feel his world open up and those chapters could be novels unto themselves.

Second Growth occurs over the course of one summer and the outsiders are not the main characters but rather the catalysts for change. These catalysts influence two younger locals, Helen and Andy, who start questioning if they may not fit the mold of the town. Helen and Andy must navigate what they will do or not within the town's physical and social boundaries. Each of them solve their dilemma in very different ways, sacrificing pieces of themselves in the process.

[J R · Rating 5 out of 5]

A plot as relevant today as it was when first published in 1947. The age-old story of a rural community in decline. Could be a village in any country in the world. The paradox of the residents and their dying town and the neighboring academics who find refuge and sustenance in the same community every summer. An early Stegner novel, brilliantly written and with incredible texture. Stegner never disappoints, but this is one to be especially savored.

[Charles Boogaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a gentle story! Kept looking back at the map as the town revealed itself . I could find my way around this town without the map now. Like the town in this story I have a similar cottage my family goes to and see a small bit of this story unfold. Like a gentle wind this story was wonderful to read though their was some damage caused by the wind .

[David Doty · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a recent trip to Boston, I found this book, published in 1947, in a used bookstore and was very happy to get it because I believe it is now out of print. One of Stegner's early novels, following "Remembering Laughter," "The Potter's House," "On a Darkling Plain," "Fire and Ice," "Mormon Country," "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," and "One Nation," this is a gem of a story about young people trying to make their way in a small New Hampshire town. The village, on the shores of a picturesque lake, is vibrant only during the three months of summer when professors and wealthy residents from New York and New Jersey travel there for vacation, is cold, parochial, and isolated the rest of the year. This is classic Stegner, with interesting characters interwoven with beautiful and symbolic descriptions of the surrounding landscape.

Near the end of the book, the narrator describes the early September scene: "Steep light and sound of chores, the smell and taste and feel of everyday under the sky which said that no day was everyday, that each day held impossibly lovely promises, that the horizons could be leaped like crumbling fences, and that beyond the horizons the wonderful was as commonplace as the common was here."

This is prose I could literally read over and over.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a great fan of "reading where you travel." So, this year, we took a 3-day side trip up to Greensboro, (Orleans County), Vermont - near the Canadian border. I wanted to see the grave site of Wallace Stegner. To prepare, I got our local library next door in Grafton, Vermont, to get for me his novel written (purportedly) about Greensboro, from Interlibrary Loan. When it arrived, it was from the Greensboro Library! It may not be one of Stegner's best (it was one of his earliest books, written in 1947), but it shows all of his best writing traits of observation and attention to place, that eventually result in Big Rock Candy Mountain. The plot (if there is one) is about the collision of values between the families of the early settlers in Vermont (and elsewhere, not only in New England, but across the U. S.) and, in Vermont's case, "the summer people." What happens to this generation's children of the settlers - the "second growth"? Will they opt for the farm or the Big City? I grew up in Iowa, just off the farm - so I could relate. By the way, the Village of Greensboro is a beautiful place and thinly veiled as the village of this novel. It was here that Wallace and Mary and their children spent virtually every summer in their cottage on the lake. It was here, in a tiny cemetery, that he and Mary chose to be buried (not too far from the burial site of John Gunther). Amazingly, you can still today see the mail box on the road on which is printed "STEGNER." The novel may have been written in 1947, but some things don't change much - and for that I'm glad. When you finish this novel, ready his last "Crossing to Safety." It is set in the same village. RIP, Mr. Stegner. Your novels live on after your voice has been stilled.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life in a small town is not always as simple and pure as the Hallmark channel would lead you to believe. In the small northeast town where the intelligentsia come to play in the summer, we follow the lives of three residents. One is a newly educated school teacher who alternatively chafes at the newly perceived narrowness of her hometown while longing for the comfort of the predictability she felt growing yo there. The second is a Jewish newly wed couple-he is a long time adopted resident of the town and she is newly arrived from New York. They struggle to fit in as she clearly sees her husband’s denial of racial bigotry while she decidedly feels it. The third individual is an exceptionally bright young man who is encouraged by the summer interlopers to pursue an education to live up to his potential, while he struggles with a family social debt that keeps his potential determinedly low. All three achieve their “second growth” with distinctly different outcomes, exemplifying the complexity that expected and unexpected social interactions can drive.
This is a quietly powerful read that shows how continuous subtle pressure of social interactions mix with an individual’s own perception of self to drive their actions. The allegory is heavy and rife throughout the book. Stegner writes about this small town with both love and distain; I feel like I know this town.
I recommend this book as a study in human social interaction and behavior. It’s not loud and flashy but subtle and meaningful.
My mother is a Stegner fan and as she downsizes her bookshelves, she shuttles her favorite Stegner novels to me; otherwise I likely wouldn’t have picked it up.

[Jay Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small town life in New Hampshire is a reflection on small town life everywhere. The names change but the characters stay the same. The weather seems to change more dramatically than the people. But running through the thread of fourteen stories, a deep movement of transformation flows as surely as an undercurrent in a stream that appears slow moving on the surface. We follow the arcs of Helen, Andy, Ruth, and the people in their lives to their inevitable yet surprising endings. Life continues the same but different.

This book is written in classic Stegner style. We know the birds, the trees, the changing landscape intimately, perhaps more so than the people who inhabit the village and the summer people who visit for only a few short months a year. I liked the pace and rhythm of the story, the rich language that conjures up strong images through all five senses. I hear the clanking of milk cans, the buzz of the sawmill, the toot of the Toonerville train, the plop of raindrops on the street. This book was very enjoyable to read, thought provoking and comforting at the same time. I recommend it.

[Marion · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 to 4 stars
What I loved about this book: 1) the beautiful descriptions of life in this small, rural New Hampshire town - Stegner's prose is rich with the smells, sights, feel of the natural world making you feel you have walked through the meadows and rowed on the lake with the characters and 2) with restraint and elegance, Stegner slowly reveals the characters lives, the tensions between the town folk and the summer folk, the characters mired in the unchanging quality of life in the village, the prejudices that have long endured in a place that never changes. Every character felt so real.
What I didn't like: the disjointed nature of the narrative.
Overall, worth it to read the exquisite language that Stegner employs to reflect the timeless beauty of this place bypassed by modern progress.

[Dianne Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

" ...they won't have any of her. She is just a rich widow, why should they let her in? it is like totemism, or Calvinism. You have to be elected, or born lucky."

A collection of vignettes, set in a small town, contrasting locals with Summer people. About half I found quite good- it is Stegner, after all.
The fault is my own, I just simply am not a fan of the short story format, which made it a bit of a forced read. And the themes I just didn't relate to.

[Geoffrey Huys · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books by Wallace Stegner. This one is a sweet story about a New England town and the people who lived there in the early years after World War II. It is a town where Time has stood still. There are the towns people and people who come for the summer. Stagner weaves the stories of a number of town residents in the story which seems to me a bit like an update of Our Town in novel form.

[Michael Asen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three stories blended into one. Stegner is a craftsman. Terrific read about small town life and human behavior.

[Bob Peru · Rating 4 out of 5]

not stegner!s usual.
but highly recommended.
early stegner.

[Charburger · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with all books I’ve read by Wallace Stegner, I loved this one. I really felt like I was living in that town, kind of a readjustment to remember I wasn’t after finishing the book.

[Whitney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gorgeous writing but I have to mark it down for the unfortunate "tragic lesbian" trope.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing

[Chrissie · Rating 5 out of 5]

People in a small town facing various inflection points. Could also be summed up with a chorus of “should I stay or should I go now?”

[Jsarno49 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminding me of Strout's approach in Olive Kitteridge, Stegner relates a series of short stories based on the characters of Westwick, a classic New England village. The unifying theme is the conflict between the summer people from Boston, New Haven, and New York, and the old time New Englanders who live in Westwick year round. Stegner is a masterful writer with a fine eye for detail as noted in the following passage: "Allan Richie's little hayfield bordered the golf course, and as he moved slowly along over the raked windrows, driving by voice and hopping to make into a load the hay poured in on him by the loader, Andy caught glimpses of men and women walking with golf bags on their shoulders, or pushing little two-wheeled buggies full of clubs, or standing spraddle-legged waggling a club back and forth."

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

While smug and unabashedly condescending toward small-town folks, Stegner nevertheless weaves a very interesting story that focuses on a wide variety of people -- each chapter is dedicated to only one or two people, and as the novel progresses, you see how all the lives of year-round residents of the fictional village, as well as the lives of the "summer folks," are intertwined. It is well-written and engrossing -- though I can easily see how this book upset folks in the small Vermont town of Greensboro (thinly veiled here as Westwick, New Hampshire) where Stegner spent his summers in the 1940s through his death in '93.

[Julie Barnard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book disappointed me. Stegner is one of my favorite authors, but the way this book was chopped up into disjointed chapters about different characters was not to my taste. The characters were interesting, but there was little connection between them.

Reading some of the reviews of other readers, I can see that others didn't agree. It would have been an interesting book to discuss.

[Drew Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An 18 year old boy who struggles with identity in a small village. He chooses to go to school because it would be fatal to accept the limited responsibilities, low expectation and security of a small town. but leaving come with its own challenges.

[Darius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another wonderful novel from Wallace Stegner. This one is set in a New England village. Read it!

[Win · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wallace Stegner is an excellent writer. But, this is not his best book.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

short, stark, perfect little story.

[Mike Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't Stegner's best, but it doesn't have to be. It's still a wonderful story.