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Harvest: a Novel
Harvest tells the story of Rose McLeod and her struggle to live an authentic life amidst the political, economic and social upheavals of rural New Zealand in the middle years of the twentieth century. A woman’s place is raising children and managing the kitchen, leaving farm decision-making to the men, but Rose yearns for mental stimulation. Soon her political activities bring her into conflict with her husband, Robert. As the feminist movement unfolds, Rose examines her own attitudes to freedom, responsibility and sexual choices in a society very different from that of her youth.
Rose grows up in a loving and well-educated Hawkes Bay family whose world is rocked by the 1931 Napier earthquake and challenged by the Depression. Just when Rose is becoming interested in boys, war snatches them away. She arrives in wartime Wellington for University life: an unexpected education in the careless disregard people have for values she assumed were universal.
Rose meets Robert McLeod, an Otago farmer undergoing military training. After a six day romance and two years of letter-writing while she develops a teaching career, Rose faces a dilemma: wait for Robert or marry an Aucklander with better prospects. Against her brother’s advice, she chooses country life, settling in South Otago where the community is suspicious of outsiders, especially a woman with a University education.
Any romantic notions of rural life are quickly shattered. Rose expected to be in charge of the ill-equipped house, but must negotiate around Robert's parents, Scots traditionalist Neil and strong-willed Marion, his recent step-mother. When the farm is repeatedly declared non-viable by the War Resettlement Board, only the belligerent and stubborn Mary, a farming woman in a man’s world, can save them.
It is no easy ride.
Robert McLeod expects Rose to be like the memory of his mother who died when he was thirteen: refined, warm-hearted and content with her role. But after fulfilling their hopes for a male heir, Rose resents the way Robert and his father distance her from decision-making and fears her own identity has been consumed.
By the 1960s, with her older children away at school, Rose takes control of her own life, engaging with campaigns to promote better education and health for all rural people, networking with other women determined to be much more than providers of cups of tea. Beyond are debates and protests over contraception and mixed flatting. Rose’s world is in turmoil: the Presbyterian church, her stability, is in disarray with Lloyd Geering’s heresy trial.
Although Robert embraces new technology, he constantly clashes with the ideas of his children and his wife. Rose’s skills are recognized in the community but not always appreciated by him. He is angry when she is offered a leadership role which he sees as his.
When Robert is seriously injured in a chainsaw accident, Rose dreads life without him. Discovering his wife can manage aborting cows and a flooded stream, Robert is confronted by her competence. They must find a way to compromise. United in spirit, they face new trials: a daughter’s unwanted pregnancy, a son turning his back on his inheritance.
With others, Rose champions the cause of women becoming farmers in their own right. Revisiting Wellington, Rose discovers it is family, community and the land itself that have bound her, not with limitations, but with love and a sense of belonging.
Finally, she must wrench herself away from this land, offering a clean slate to the son who unexpectedly accepts he will take the farm into the fifth generation.
Through the McLeod family, Harvest portrays the adaptability, resilience and self-reliance of rural people in a manner that is informative, original and engaging.
Rose grows up in a loving and well-educated Hawkes Bay family whose world is rocked by the 1931 Napier earthquake and challenged by the Depression. Just when Rose is becoming interested in boys, war snatches them away. She arrives in wartime Wellington for University life: an unexpected education in the careless disregard people have for values she assumed were universal.
Rose meets Robert McLeod, an Otago farmer undergoing military training. After a six day romance and two years of letter-writing while she develops a teaching career, Rose faces a dilemma: wait for Robert or marry an Aucklander with better prospects. Against her brother’s advice, she chooses country life, settling in South Otago where the community is suspicious of outsiders, especially a woman with a University education.
Any romantic notions of rural life are quickly shattered. Rose expected to be in charge of the ill-equipped house, but must negotiate around Robert's parents, Scots traditionalist Neil and strong-willed Marion, his recent step-mother. When the farm is repeatedly declared non-viable by the War Resettlement Board, only the belligerent and stubborn Mary, a farming woman in a man’s world, can save them.
It is no easy ride.
Robert McLeod expects Rose to be like the memory of his mother who died when he was thirteen: refined, warm-hearted and content with her role. But after fulfilling their hopes for a male heir, Rose resents the way Robert and his father distance her from decision-making and fears her own identity has been consumed.
By the 1960s, with her older children away at school, Rose takes control of her own life, engaging with campaigns to promote better education and health for all rural people, networking with other women determined to be much more than providers of cups of tea. Beyond are debates and protests over contraception and mixed flatting. Rose’s world is in turmoil: the Presbyterian church, her stability, is in disarray with Lloyd Geering’s heresy trial.
Although Robert embraces new technology, he constantly clashes with the ideas of his children and his wife. Rose’s skills are recognized in the community but not always appreciated by him. He is angry when she is offered a leadership role which he sees as his.
When Robert is seriously injured in a chainsaw accident, Rose dreads life without him. Discovering his wife can manage aborting cows and a flooded stream, Robert is confronted by her competence. They must find a way to compromise. United in spirit, they face new trials: a daughter’s unwanted pregnancy, a son turning his back on his inheritance.
With others, Rose champions the cause of women becoming farmers in their own right. Revisiting Wellington, Rose discovers it is family, community and the land itself that have bound her, not with limitations, but with love and a sense of belonging.
Finally, she must wrench herself away from this land, offering a clean slate to the son who unexpectedly accepts he will take the farm into the fifth generation.
Through the McLeod family, Harvest portrays the adaptability, resilience and self-reliance of rural people in a manner that is informative, original and engaging.
340 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2018
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