The Wall Between: Navigating Family Dynamics and Gender Expectations in Early 20th Century Fiction

by Sara Ware Bassett

The book tells the story of two farms; Howe and Webster's farms adjoined, lying on a sun-flooded, gently sloping New Hampshire hillside. Between them loomed The Wall. It was not a high wall. On the contrary, its formidableness was the result of tradition rather than fact. The wall has been there for generations, and it's crumbling. As in a bygone age one runner passed a lighted torch on to another, so did one generation of Howes and Websters bequeath to the next the embers of wrath that never died. Each faction disclaimed all responsibility for the wall, and each refused to lay a handono it…And now that Martin Howe and Ellen Webster reigned in their respective homesteads, neither one of them was any more graciously inclined toward raising the fallen boundary to its pristine glory than had been their progenitors. Will Martin Howe and Ellen Webster dispense with the wall and call a truce?

104 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 24, 2021

About the author

Sara Ware Bassett (1872 – 1968) was a prolific American author of fiction and nonfiction. Her novels primarily deal with New England characters, and most of them are set in two fictional Cape Cod villages she created, Belleport and Wilton.
(Source: en.wikipedia.org)

Reviews

[Phoebe Pritchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sweet little story of neighbor rivalries, a crotchety old woman, and love conquering all.

“I presume you have found, as I have, that living entirely for one’s self is not very satisfactory after all.”