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Buttonwood
Buttonwood is a place, a compromise, a state of bliss. But it lies hidden in the secret recesses of a man's heart as a testament to the fragile strength of human bonds. This robust novel pulsates with the inner desperations of its characters. It tears away the frauds of their daily living and reveals the explosive truths behind the facade they show the world.
Paul Maitland was a war hero, destined for a colorful career as a flier; instead he works in an automobile plant and maintains the house on Clark Street for his widowed mother and impoverished aunt. Jessie, his mother, fills her crowded days with good works, comforting the sick and forlorn, but has no notion of the peculiar living arrangements of her son or the impending collapse of her daughter's marriage.
Jessie, Aunt Charlie and Sister Annie know that Paul has a "woman," a tramp most likely, yet never suspect the amazing truth, that he is sole mainstay of seven dissimilar people, none of whom has any legal claim to such devotion. Suzy, Jo's confused teen-age daughter, accepts his role as a father but wonders why he won't marry her mother. Paul cannot explain. Only one woman really knows why, and she is least accessible. The uninhibited friend, Bowman, thinks he has the answer — but does he? Posed against this enigma is the equally strange affair of Annie and Nick, who love each other tenderly but find marriage a painful experience with no solution.
In this most searching of all her novels, Maritta Wolff proves herself a gifted creator, one who knows well the voices, hearts and minds of her diverse characters and how to make these common people seem remarkably uncommon.
Paul Maitland was a war hero, destined for a colorful career as a flier; instead he works in an automobile plant and maintains the house on Clark Street for his widowed mother and impoverished aunt. Jessie, his mother, fills her crowded days with good works, comforting the sick and forlorn, but has no notion of the peculiar living arrangements of her son or the impending collapse of her daughter's marriage.
Jessie, Aunt Charlie and Sister Annie know that Paul has a "woman," a tramp most likely, yet never suspect the amazing truth, that he is sole mainstay of seven dissimilar people, none of whom has any legal claim to such devotion. Suzy, Jo's confused teen-age daughter, accepts his role as a father but wonders why he won't marry her mother. Paul cannot explain. Only one woman really knows why, and she is least accessible. The uninhibited friend, Bowman, thinks he has the answer — but does he? Posed against this enigma is the equally strange affair of Annie and Nick, who love each other tenderly but find marriage a painful experience with no solution.
In this most searching of all her novels, Maritta Wolff proves herself a gifted creator, one who knows well the voices, hearts and minds of her diverse characters and how to make these common people seem remarkably uncommon.
343 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1962
4 people want to read
About the author
Maritta Wolff
14 books7 followersMaritta Martin Wolff Stegman (December 25, 1918 – July 1, 2002) was an American author.
She was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake, Jackson County, Michigan. She grew up on her grandparents' farm and attended a one-room country school. Wolff was a senior at the University of Michigan when she wrote a novel-length story for an English composition class that won the 1940 Avery Hopwood Award, a university prize for excellent writing, worth $1,000. Whistle Stop is a seamy tale of the Veeches, a shiftless family living in a whistle-stop town near Detroit. The novel, depicting incest, violence, and containing much more vulgar language than was usual at the time, was published the next year by Random House. That Wolff, a mere 22-year-old, was the author of so hard-boiled a novel gave her an instant notoriety, and Whistle Stop became an immediate best-seller, going into five editions and a special armed forces edition. Yet the book was not without literary merit, Sinclair Lewis calling it "the most important novel of the year."
Wolff's second novel, Night Shift, attracted more critical praise, especially for its dialog. Over the next 20 years she wrote four more best-selling novels. Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher's request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction.
While at the University of Michigan she had met and married a prolific young writer, Hubert Skidmore, who published six novels before he was 30. Skidmore died in a house fire in 1946. In 1947 Wolff married a costume jeweller, Leonard Stegman, by whom she had a son, Hugh Stegman.
After Wolff's death, the manuscript for Sudden Rain, which had been kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.
She was born on December 25, 1918 in born in Grass Lake, Jackson County, Michigan. She grew up on her grandparents' farm and attended a one-room country school. Wolff was a senior at the University of Michigan when she wrote a novel-length story for an English composition class that won the 1940 Avery Hopwood Award, a university prize for excellent writing, worth $1,000. Whistle Stop is a seamy tale of the Veeches, a shiftless family living in a whistle-stop town near Detroit. The novel, depicting incest, violence, and containing much more vulgar language than was usual at the time, was published the next year by Random House. That Wolff, a mere 22-year-old, was the author of so hard-boiled a novel gave her an instant notoriety, and Whistle Stop became an immediate best-seller, going into five editions and a special armed forces edition. Yet the book was not without literary merit, Sinclair Lewis calling it "the most important novel of the year."
Wolff's second novel, Night Shift, attracted more critical praise, especially for its dialog. Over the next 20 years she wrote four more best-selling novels. Always a private person who shunned publicity, Wolff, in 1972, refused her publisher's request to go on a promotional tour for a recently finished novel, Sudden Rain, and as a result the novel was never published during her lifetime. At that point she evidently ceased writing fiction.
While at the University of Michigan she had met and married a prolific young writer, Hubert Skidmore, who published six novels before he was 30. Skidmore died in a house fire in 1946. In 1947 Wolff married a costume jeweller, Leonard Stegman, by whom she had a son, Hugh Stegman.
After Wolff's death, the manuscript for Sudden Rain, which had been kept safely in her refrigerator for the last thirty years of her life, was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 15, 2021
Wolff's powerful writing comes in her ability to craft characters we well I feel I know them, that they are in the room with me. She has an incredible ear for dialogue and writing about scenes where seven characters dine together (with a TV on in the background, adding to the dialogue) she handles with clarity and scale.
I read this novel in three days--perfect because the action takes place over three days. In that time, lives unravel, wander, fumble, and gain momentum. Wolff shows the loneliness that can rut a life as well as the passion that gives life a rutting chance.
This is the seventh book that I've read of Wolff's; now, I have read all of her novels. Buttonwood is stronger than Anderson's, Winesburg, Ohio, in creating naturalism of scene and characters with dimension and personality. Plot? Not so much. Read a thriller or mystery. A Wolff novel is to entire a family dinner and all the dynamics and nuance that come with that.
She was a remarkable writer, just the kind of novels I love!
I read this novel in three days--perfect because the action takes place over three days. In that time, lives unravel, wander, fumble, and gain momentum. Wolff shows the loneliness that can rut a life as well as the passion that gives life a rutting chance.
This is the seventh book that I've read of Wolff's; now, I have read all of her novels. Buttonwood is stronger than Anderson's, Winesburg, Ohio, in creating naturalism of scene and characters with dimension and personality. Plot? Not so much. Read a thriller or mystery. A Wolff novel is to entire a family dinner and all the dynamics and nuance that come with that.
She was a remarkable writer, just the kind of novels I love!
Displaying 1 of 1 review