Quest

by Helen R. Hull, Patricia McClelland Miller (Afterword)

Helen Hull's first novel is the story of a young woman's coming of age in a small Midwestern town at the turn of the century. Jean Winthrop is the daughter of unhappy parents--her father a failed academic who eventually turns to drinking and gambling and her mother a resentful victim of marital dependence. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Jean, like Hull, glimpses a world beyond her own through reading, and she also discovers models for the life she would like to lead in a few female teachers who nurture her intellectual ability and encourage her autonomy.

Genres: Fiction

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Helen Rose Hull was brought up in Michigan, the eldest child of a schools superintendent and a former teacher. Early on she and her brother became financially responsible for their family. She went to Lansing High School and Michigan State University and was a schoolteacher; after graduate work she went to Wellesley College to teach creative writing. Here she met Mabel Louise Robinson with whom she lived for the rest of her life. Their home was in New York and, in summer, in North Brooklin, Maine. She joined the Department of English at Columbia in 1916 and taught there for the next forty years, becoming professor. In New York she was a key member of the Heterodoxy Club, a group of outstanding and unorthodox women. She published numerous short stories and the first of her 17 novels came out in 1922, the last in 1963.

- from the back cover of 'Heat Lightning' published by Persephone Books

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Winthrop, the heroine of this 1922 book, is like a seed struggling to grow in a rocky place. Bright, sensitive and loving, she grows up in an atmosphere of emotional chaos, created by her parents' troubled relationship and financial difficulties. The day to day happenings of a young girl's life at the turn of the last century reveal an imperfect heroine who the reader cheers (and sometimes blushes) for.