The Able McLaughlins

The McLaughlins #1

by Margaret Wilson

"The Able McLaughlins" is a novel by Margaret Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924. It follows a family of Scotch Covenanters who settled the American prairies in the 1860s. The McLaughlin's oldest son Wully has just returned from the Civil War planning to marry his sweetheart Christie McNair, but for some reason, she won't talk to him anymore. Wully finds himself hurt and perplexed until he finds out that the cause of her rejection is the terrible secret she has been keeping…

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Civil War, Literary Fiction, Literature, 20th Century

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

American novelist Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson in 1923 married G.D. Turner and afterward resided in England. She was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for The Able McLaughlins .

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm reading every Pulitzer Prize winning novel, in order, and reached 1924's The Able McLaughlins. With a deep breath, and gritted teeth, I started a book I'd never heard of, that I was sure I wouldn't like. I thought the title was stupid and the plot didn't interest me.
But, as it turned out, I judged The Able McLaughlins too fast.
The novel takes place in a midwestern Scottish farming community during the 1860s. The McLaughlin family's oldest son Wully has just returned from the Civil War ready to marry his sweetheart Chirstie McNair. But for some reason, she won't talk to him, and, worse yet, she won't tell him why. Wully is hurt and confused until he finds out the cause of her rejection and the terrible secret she’s been harboring. The rest of the novel is about the effect Chirstie's secret has not only on her and Wully, but on the entire community.
This is a simple, highly accessible novel. Some have called it melodramatic, and I get that, but for me, the word "sentimental" does a better job of describing it. Wilson's depiction of life on the prairie owes a lot to Willa Cather, and while the characters aren't nearly as complex and interesting as those seen in Cather's work, Wilson clearly loves them, and does a great job celebrating the simple life they lead.
Ultimately, this is a book in praise of everything good that humanity has to offer. The last 30 pages had me riveted and I wasn't sure how Wilson was going to end it, but she clearly comes down on the side of generosity and grace in a way that feels truly life affirming.
There are no complicated metaphors here, no symbolism, no subtlety. Yet this small, sweet story still has a lot to offer.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do some of these books win the Pulitzer? Among the earlier ones, some just don’t wear well because the subject matter becomes outdated, but this isn’t one of those. This is a seriously underwhelming and ordinary book. It is not a bad read, there are parts of it, particularly those that describe the difficulties of this rural life and the environment, that are beautifully done.

Tears were running down Isobel McLaughlin’s face as she finished. Though she never doubted that God was infinitely kind, she wondered at times why that something else, called life, or nature, should be so cruel.

It isn’t that you cannot understand what Margaret Wilson hopes to achieve with this novel. She would like us to think about the nature of revenge and forgiveness. She intends, I think, to highlight the responsibility of the strong to the weak, the nature of self-sacrifice. She means to promote Christian values.

She is not particularly effective in her efforts, because she is strangely inconsistent. Her main character is a young man by the name of Wully McLaughlin. Wully returns from the Civil War to find things at home are not as he left them. Wully is, by turns, very strong, determined and angry, and very weak, wavering and sentimental. I had a hard time reconciling the early image of the young soldier with the later images Wilson paints. At the end of the book, I had little sense of who Wully really was.

There are chapters of little or no forward movement, in which, I assume, we are expected to build some affinity with the characters. Sadly, for me, this did not happen. There is an almost side narrative that seems to never fit within the main storyline. Reactions are overblown to the point of hyperbole, and often do not seem to fit with the situation. I found some of the feelings of the characters simply impossible to understand, not the least of these being those of the young girl who is at the heart of the plot.

In my final complaint, I wonder what world-shaking activity Margaret Wilson felt she had to run off to when she wrote the ending to this novel. After building to what should have been a climactic end, she simply folds her tent and exits with a whimper. I’m sure Wilson intended to show Wully struggling with himself and his feelings, but what was left to me was a confused sequence of antithetical emotions that seemed unrealistic, if not impossible. I felt faintly dissatisfied.

Had this book not won the Pulitzer prize I would have simply counted it as a mediocre read. One cannot help expecting more from a Pulitzer. Not every winner is a winner.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I would say that this Pulitzer winner is mediocre writing, I can also say that I liked the story. It's one of those rather idyllic prairie/frontier immigrant farming stories that seemed to have captivated so many writers of the 1920s and 30s, albeit a story centered around a really tragic event. Reminded me of Willa Cather's "My Antonia" and Edna Ferber's "So Big," among others. What I'm really appreciating about my project of reading all the Pulitzer fiction winners is that I'm getting an interesting view of what stories resonated in the American consciousness at certain times in the history of fiction writing over the past 100 years. There are definite patterns and trends. And I'm also able to observe lots of snapshots of life that show how things were so vastly different in the various regions of the country when communication between them was nearly non-existent. Life was so parochial and provincial. And this novel paints a portrait of life in 1860s Iowa for Scottish immigrants that is just so removed from life in 1860s Georgia (Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind") or 1860s Alabama (Stribling's "The Store") or 1870s high society New York City (Wharton's "Age of Innocence"). Anyway, this novel is a part of that body of literature that contributes to these parochial snapshots of mid-19th century life in the US. That's what makes it valuable to me, though the writing isn't great.

[Mimi Stamper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The writing was a bit archaic and full of Scottish dialect, but once you got past that, it was beautiful. The story follows a group of families from Scotland who settled the American prairies in the 1860s. The heartache of ten kids in a one-room cabin and endless days of back-breaking labor are offset by the beauty of the prairies and the love the families share and the joy of freedom and possibility. Hard as it was, the freedom of this country and the ability to own land made this the promised land. There is a love story at the heart of the book, but my favorite passage involved a prairie woman who passed on cuttings from her peonies. They had been carried by her on the wagons from back East, and by her mother before her, and by her grandmother before. Lonely women carrying a bit of color close to their hearts into this foreign land; she held it high as they crossed an unbridged river so it wouldn't get wet. They had to leave their trunks and all household goods behind, but she held onto her peony. What a beautiful story of strong women.

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most readers reviewing this book, I am working my way through all of the Pulitzer Prize winning books. Some of the winners are completely unknown to me, and this is one of those. I had never heard of the book or author. And, honestly, I went into this one prepared to be bored and disappointed. I didn't expect to like it at all. However I was wrong. I liked it a lot. I found the characters realistic, flawed, likable and interesting. And I kept thinking about my own Scottish immigrant great-grandfather who also settled into farming in Iowa. It felt like I was reading his personal history. I found the writing here to be simple, subtle nuanced, quiet and completely appropriate to the story and setting.

The Able McLaughlins takes place during the 1860s in a Scottish faming community. The family's oldest son, Wully, has receently come home after fighting for the Union Army in the Civil War. He is excited to get home and marry his sweetheart Christie McNair. Unfortunately when he arrives at her farm she refuses to speak to him. He is hurt, but determined to find out why she is rejecting him. He eventually convinces her to confide in him and they marry. But her secret is one that impacts the entire community and the determines the course of their lives. The rest of the novel is about the effects of that secret. I loved the quiet scenes describing life on the farm. The simple job of sewing clothing. The hard work tilling the soil. The desire to beautify the land and home. Each little moment painted a picture that allowed me to believe I was there, sitting by the fire, with all of the McLaughlins.

I found the book charming and warm; hopeful and redemptive.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a hard book to track down. Its somewhat melodramatic theme and uneven writing quality probably account for its relative obscurity despite having won the Pulitzer Prize. It is a Civil War-era story about Wully's ill-fated return from the Civil War finding his sweetheart pregnant and compromised and his failed attempts to deal with it. He accepts Chiristine (yes, that is how it is spelled) and lies to the family about the true father of the kid (the bad Peter who is run off and predictably returns for the denouement). The book is also the story of Scottish immigration into Iowa (like those of Norweigan and Swedish immigrants in the Cather books or Dutch immigrants in Ferber) which adds an interesting cultural twist.
However, don't know yourself out trying to find this one. It was OK, but I am uncertain that it truly deserved a Pulitzer.

My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has great characters and great descriptions of the setting of the novel. I love the opening sentence of the book. The book is set in Iowa during pioneer days and gives a good view of what life was like at that time. A refreshing read as it is devoid of edgy elements that writers seem to think must be included in today's novels.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I enjoyed this short novel, it did not seem like the type of book that would be awarded a Pulitzer. It certainly illustrates how our taste in literary fiction has changed over the past century. This is the story of a young soldier who returns to his Iowa farming family and the girl he loves. I appreciated how far ahead of its time it seemed to be in describing a family responding to a victim of rape. There was the hint of the morality tale in the portrayal of characters and the novel’s resolution. Hard work and decency are rewarded in the end while cruelty and laziness are punished by forces beyond human justice. I was disappointed that the author did not capture the Scottish dialect. At one point, a younger brother being educated in Chicago criticizes the family for a speech that is neither English nor Scottish. But, the dialogue only contains smatterings of phrases such as “wee one” or “lass”. 3.5 stars

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading my way through the Pulitzers - and my guess is most people who have read this book are undertaking the same project as me.

I have a few bones to pick with Margaret Wilson. First, I do not understand her decision to sneak in references to future events at completely random moments. For example: "What he saw there made so great an impression on him, that fifty-seven years later, when that stranger’s grandson was one of the disheartened veterans of the World War who came to his office looking for work…"

There were so many of these future references peppered in at the most inane times, it seemed like Wilson was substituting glimpses into the future for adjectives. I read that there was actually a sequel written to this book called The Law and the McLaughlins, but from what I can tell on Wikipedia, it doesn’t actually address any of the little insights into the future that Wilson peppered into this story.

Second, this story was summarized as a “love story between Chirstie and Wully” but there was no palpable chemistry between the two. Chirstie didn’t have much of a personality beyond vulnerable and scared, and neither of these characters had much depth. The wooing of Chirstie seemed more like Wully forcing himself onto her because he fantasized about her the entire time he was in the Army. The fact that Chirstie ultimately accepts has more to do with her own personal circumstances and not at all due to reciprocating Wully’s feelings.

My favorite character was Barbara McNair, whose relationship with Chirstie’s father served as a nice foil to the troubles of Wully & Chirstie. Barbara comes to Iowa thinking that Chirstie’s father is a large, wealthy property owner (which he is, but only because he’s able to buy land by saving money on everything else). She is a kindhearted, generous, and independently wealthy woman, which is my favorite kind of woman!

However, although the main characters were a little lacking, I thought Wilson did a really good job of creating a Scottish community in the 1860s (although I’m not an expert.) From the farming process, to how close and gossipy the locals are, to the social dynamics at church and in town, I was enamored with the atmosphere, if not the plot. In this way, this book reminded me of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, which I recommended reading for the wit, and not the characters or plot. However, if you’re not trying to read all of the Pulitzer winners, I would say you could skip this book altogether.

[William Adam Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 1924 winner of the Pulitzer prize for fiction is stronger for its characterization than it is for its plot development. This story focuses on two Scottish families that have migrated to rural Iowa during the mid 1800's, the McLaughlin and McNair families. Wully McLaughlin is the main protagonist of the story. He has returned from serving his time in the Civil War and is ready to start a family of his own. Wully is pleased to see that a girl who lives on a neighboring farm, Christie McNair, has grown up during his absence and seems to take a liking to Wully. Wully's mother is Isobel McLaughlin and she is pleased that Wully is taking up the mantle of responsibility. Isobel is a strongly drawn character in the story and also a center for moral righteousness for her family as well as the community at large.

The conflict in this story centers on a sexual assault. Since this book was written in the 1920's there is nothing explicit about its presentation. The reader must deduce some of the information without it being presented fully. The story is more about how the main characters deal with the traumatic event that has come into their lives. The story is not overly grim however. There is a side plot involving Barbara McNair, who is the second wife of Alex McNair, Christie's father, who has just arrived in Iowa from Scotland. Barbara is shocked to discover that her new husband and family live in a desolate shack instead of a proper home. She is determined not to live in a sty, as she calls it, and how she goes about getting the home that she wants is a very winning part of this story. Barbara is one of the more interesting characters in the story, but then she pretty much disappears from the novel as it moves towards its conclusion.

The ending is abrupt to this story. I won't spoil the ending but I will say that the author wants to emphasize the forces of grace and forgiveness that are a big part of the purposes of this story. The characters in this story are strong individuals that are compelling to read about. I wish the story might have had a few more elements that rounded the characters out, it felt a little thin to me. The plotting of the novel was not as strong as the characters themselves. I would rank it 27th out of the 33 Pulitzer winners I have read so far.

[Bookslut · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this, and couldn't put it down. I don't know why, but I am really feeling it with the turn of the century literature these days! I found this a very pleasant Pulitzer to work through, and thought the setting was brilliantly done. I loved the wheat. I also really enjoyed having the original first edition, which was sent from a library in Tallahassee. The book was the perfect size, and had absurdly thick pages, and came by its 100 years of old book scent honestly. It was a rare treat.

[Susan's Sweat Smells Like Literature · Rating 2 out of 5]

Melodramatic mess with a couple of awkward flash forwards. Can't believe it won the Pulitzer award for fiction.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Brian E Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed reading this 1924 Pulitzer winner. The examination of life in rural 1860s Iowa develops from a slice of life tale to a more compelling and suspenseful story during most of the second half. I thought the plot was both interesting and well done, as were the descriptions of the frontier prairie life. However, I thought some of the characters, especially the female romantic lead Chirstie, were slightly superficial and under-developed. I’m not sure I ever knew Chirstie. However, Chirstie’s stepmother was a well-rounded character. I became more interested whenever she entered the story.
I also thought the writing was sufficient and clear, but paled in comparison to the elegant and atmospheric writing of the preceding and succeeding Pulitzer winning portraits of Midwest farm life, Willa Cather’s One of Ours and Edna Ferber’s So Big. However, as mentioned, the descriptions of the rural life were sufficiently descriptive to keep my interest.
Those who read this book will likely do so because it is a Pulitzer winner. One reviewer of the time said: "the book is so good as a first novel that it is impossible not to regret that it must always be judged as a prize novel." While this might not be top tier writing, the story is good enough and short enough to be worth the time. I was entertained enough, so a 3 star read.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading Pulitzer Prize winners for what they reveal about what was on the United States' mind, so to speak. Especially because they often seem to be set in the past, and it can be very interesting to see what the past (in this case, 1924) thought about the past past (in this case, prairie life around the end of the Civil War).

This book is a simple story, simply told, with a surprisingly thoughtful ending and a bit of an interesting glimpse into the frontier prairie life. It has an old-fashioned feel to its phrasing and isn't particularly literary or heavy; it goes quickly and draws you into the life of the two-main-characters couple. It is sufficiently interesting about the Scottish immigrant community in which this couple dwells, but more interesting for its moral statement on human character and rising to the occasion.

[Margret Melissa (ladybug) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. I started to read it and found myself having a hard time putting it down. It was really descriptive of what the Civil War and the aftermath for one family was like. I liked the fact that Wully didn't let what happened to Christie stop him from loving, marrying and caring for her and her son. Wully tried his hardest to care for her and I believe he was successful in the end.

[Zorro · Rating 2 out of 5]

1924.....Hmmm. Virginia Woolf was writing at this time. Americans Fitzgerald,Hemmingway, Faulkner hmmmm....and this was the best the US could choose??? Sweet story.

[M F · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having just escaped from a hellish brush with Quebecois regionalism (thanks, Riguet), I couldn’t wait to open the pages of this new book: Margaret Wilson’s The Able McLaughlins, the next entry in my foray through the Pulitzer Award winners for fiction. Best to just jump right into it and erase the bad memories before they have a chance to encode, I thought, so I turned to page 1, hoping for a bit of that perhaps-a bit-dull-but-at least-mildly-interesting urban realism with which Pulitzer folks of the 1920s seemed obsessed. What I found was this:

“The prairie lay that afternoon as it had lain for centuries of September afternoons, vast as an ocean; motionless as an ocean coaxed into very little ripples by languid breezes; silent as an ocean where only very little waves slip back into their element. One might have walked for hours with hearing anything louder than high white clouds casting shadows over the distances, or the tall slough grass bending lazily into waves.”

F%%%@#$#$%#%#$%$%@#$@3$#@$#$@#$$@$!!!!!!! Pulitzer people, why hast thou forsaken me?? Yes, the literary Gods had placed another regionalist novel in front of me at my weakest hour, this time set in civil war-era Iowa (which is to say, a wheat field dotted with a thatched cottage every twenty miles or so). Like Thirty Acres before it (on my reading list, that is), the novel’s action traces the exploits of a young farmer protagonist—this time, Wully McLaughlin, a Scotch Covenanter who has just returned from the civil war--as he enters adulthood (in other words, gets him a wife, and gets him a child, and then starts farming). The scope, though, is less ambitious in this novel than in Thirty Acres, spanning only a couple years of Wully’s life rather than tracing his entire adult life from spring to winter. I won’t lie to you, though, it’s still a regionalist novel, and outside of a few major plot events and some humourous sketches, it’s still fairly dull most of the time.

Perhaps because of its more limited scope, the novel’s characters are much more clearly drawn, and are one of its few strengths. Wully’s mother, Isobel, is a woman torn between her kind heart and her religious beliefs, and beaten down by her realization that the America promised to them in Scotland is not quite what they found when they arrived. The community members around them, too, are all distinguished in one way or another through particularities of character—Wully’s aunt, for instance, haunted by her grief for her missing son, and his father-in-law, bent to the yoke by his new Scottish bride who punishes him for deceiving her by forcing him to create, in the Iowan plains, the things he promised her he had in order to convince her to marry him. Unfortunately, Chirstie, probably the novel's most important character, is also one of its less fleshed out, filtered entirely through her husband's unimaginative perspective.

Now on to the bad: the narrative voice is a poor echo of Little Women’s, a saccharine consciousness obsessed with adverbs and adjectives and overly fond of exclamations, as in the following:

“Hughie was not, like the others, at home because he was too small to go to school. Indeed, no! Hughie was ten, and at home to-day because he had been chilling, the day before, with the fever that rose from the newly-broken prairie. The three of them sat quietly only a moment.

'Why does he frisk his tail so?' Davie asked.

'He’s praising the Lord,' replied Hughie, wise and wan.

'Is he now!' exclaimed Davie, impressed.”

Such passages are tough to read, and there are many of them, some of which are so amateurishly written that it’s hard to believe they made the final cut. See, for instance, the following delight: “He loved his land like a blind and passionate lover” (38). Also, at one point, the narrator switches at random between past and present tense, so that it feels like the story is being told by an infant who has not yet mastered the fundamentals of language but is so excited to tell their story that they forge ahead regardless. There are also occasional intentional shifts to present tense which provide information about the characters' fates in the narrator's present world. However, these serve no discernible purpose within the narrative structure and, thus, function only as reminders of how clumsy a writer Wilson is.

Fortunately, the writing quality improves as the novel goes on, and the narrator is often more self-aware than some of the novel’s more pastoral moments might suggest; later in the novel’s first passage quoted above, Wilson writes, “Davie sat for some time sharing his Maker’s pleasure in the antics of happy calves. Then bored—perhaps like his Maker—he turned to other things” (8). As the passage suggests, Wilson makes use of a good helping of irony, and some of the most entertaining moments are when she engages in farce, poking fun at the rigidity of beliefs and eccentricities of the community’s characters, such as in her humourous description of Wully’s stingy grandmother, who buys up her son’s belongings at auction when he is evicted from his house in Scotland and sells his stuff at a huge profit, then refuses to share any of the money with him. As a result, he must wait until she dies to claim some of the money from the sale of his own property so that he can fulfill his dream of emigrating to America for the betterment of his family.

Sometimes, though, because of the clunky writing, it’s not entirely clear whether Wilson is aware of how ridiculous the things she’s writing about are. The opening chapter contains one of the novel’s weirdest moments, as the narration suddenly shifts focalizers after 20 pages, moving from Wully’s third-person limited perspective to that of a “stranger” who is visiting the family, so that Wilson and the reader can have a little fun at the expense of the strictly religious McLaughlins. The logic of the shift is brilliant, but its execution is clumsy, and the humourous moment is sullied somewhat by the possibility that it is unintentional—that the narrator, and writer, are not in on the joke. The same thing happens in the funny-but-weird-as-hell scene when Wullly first meets his love interest, Chirstie (yes, that’s “Chirstie,” not “Christie,” at least in my edition of the novel, though the rest of the internet seems to believe it’s the latter, so maybe there are different versions). Telling her and her mother, Jeannie, that his own mother sent him to bring over some “squashes,” he goes out to the wagon and realizes that, flustered by Chirstie’s beauty, he forgot that what he has actually brought is ducks. Yes, ducks. Which raises a new problem: the women have no place to put ducks (apparently, they’d never seen Friends). The narrator notes awkwardly: “Now where would they put the ducks? They were all standing together now in the dooryard, the three ducks, the three humans. There was no place ready for the gifts” (47). Wully, of course, decides that the only thing to do is build a coop for them, but another problem arises: “Just give him a few sticks. But there were no sticks.” Yes, that’s right: “sticks” are what we build coops out of. Happily, Chirstie remembers that there are “some bits of wood behind the barn,” and so the two women stand there while Wully builds an entire duck coop, Chirstie lustily “watching his skill in making duck shelters” (47). Now, I don’t know how long it takes to build a duck coop, because I didn’t even know ducks were kept in coops, but given that Wully’s likely going to have to cut the random bits of wood into something like boards--or, sorry, "sticks"--and since it’s the 19th century and there will be no tablesaw and electric planer, I have to figure this process is going to take at least a few hours, which means that Chirstie and her mother stand there long enough to die of gangrene as the blood pools in their feet. And that’s not even getting to the real problem: Jeannie and Wully's mother are good friends, which presumably means that they have been to each other’s homes. Why the hell would Isobel send over ducks when she knows Jeannie has no place to put them??!! That would be like me dropping off a Great Dane for my friend who lives in a studio apartment in Gastown; I can imagine how grateful he would be for the "gift." White elephants, indeed. Again, this scene is quite funny, but I’m just not sure that Wilson is as aware of the humour as her reader. But I guess it’s sort of like the Evil Dead thing: it doesn’t really matter whether it was meant to be funny or not—let’s just enjoy it!

It's not all bad, though: the oddest, and best, part of the novel is that the saccharine narration belies what is a fairly dark streak; especially early on, it almost reads like a new genre, one which I will call decorous batsh#@. It feels a bit like reading a mashup of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, with all the parts strewn about at random so that one never knows whether the sing-songy narrator is leading one through twenty pages of lamb shearing and wheat harvesting or to some poor sot stumbling over a Tyger burning brightly in the furrows between cornrows. After a long stretch of relatively earnest and pastoral writing to begin the novel, for instance, the narrator suddenly shifts to a civil war battleground and croons to us this horror: “Some on the snow-covered hillsides were throwing body after body into them, some were shoveling earth in upon them. He had bent down to tug at a stiff thing half hidden by snow, he had turned it over, a head grotesquely twisted backward, a neck mud-plastered, horrible, bloody. Then he had cried out, and fallen down. That thing, with the lower face shot away, was Allen” (24). With little warning, we suddenly find ourselves a long way from the agrarian dreamscape of the McLaughlins’ Iowa farm, and the early sections of the novel are fascinating when they hint at the effects of such trauma on Wully’s character. This could have made for a wonderfully powerful novel; unfortunately, though, once Wully re-immerses himself into the rhythms of farm life, the civil war and its effects on the people who have rejoined their communities disappears as suddenly as Allen’s body appears in the passage above. Fortunately, Wilson redeems the narrative by introducing a second traumatic incident that will sporadically haunt Wully, his wife, and his family for the rest of the novel’s pages, and though the exploration of trauma is compromised by its filtration through Wilson’s sentimental narration, there’s plenty of interest to be found in the glimpses we get of its impact on the characters’ lives.

In the end, this is one of the weirdest regionalist pieces I’ve ever read, and even if the weirdness is unintentional, the results are occasionally entertaining, even profound. I still don’t know that I’d recommend this novel, but it’s certainly better than Thirty Acres, and though it’s not as good a novel as some of the other Pulitzer winner to this point, like The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, or One of Ours--which are not, by any means, great novels—it is, in some ways, a more compelling read. I’m still giving this two stars, but, in the words of Anthony Fantano, it’s a “strong 2.”

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for The Able McLaughlins in 1924. The story is about a Scotish family who pioneer the Iowa wilderness in the 1860's. I enjoyed the story but the character development was not up to some of the other Pulitzers I have read. I did, however, greatly enjoy the ending of this book as the final conflict is resolved with the main characters with a superb demonstration of forgiveness. I give this book 4 stars.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intriguing story that takes readers back to the civil war and a strange situation when Wully McLaughlin returns from the war and finds the woman he loved pregnant with another man’s child. I think stories like this are fascinating.

[Albert Dubreuil · Rating 3 out of 5]

At least it was short!

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my journey of reading the Pulitzers, I find this unknown (to me) book which can’t be put down. Brave, strong folks from a difficult time are portrayed with honest scrutiny and compassion. I wish I had not read it so quickly, but had savored it more.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work totally engrossed me. Published in 1924 it tells the story of Wully who was returning to his prairie home after serving in the Civil War. This is a story of a Scottish clan, Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons and cousins who became Americans by dint of very hard work and tenacity. The plot was very shocking, I am certain, when it was published because it touches on a subject that was very taboo. The hundred year old work felt very alive and fresh to me. I enjoyed spending time with these characters. This is a Pulitzer Prize winning work when it was published. I totally see why.

[The Immersion Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

💫Immerse Yourself in The Able McLaughlins💫
🎶Listen: American Classical for Reading & Focus | 1850-1899

Even yet he could scarcely believe that there existed such an expanse of eager virgin soil waiting for whoever would husband it. Ten years of storm-bound winters, and fever-shaken, marketless summers before the war, had not chilled his passion for it - nor poverty so great that sometimes it took the combined efforts of the clan to buy a twenty-five cent stamp to write to Scotland of the measureless wealth upon which they had fallen.

In this 1924 Pulitzer-prize winning novel, Wilson tells the story of Scottish pioneers eeking out a life in the American midwest during the 1860s. She treats the tale with rich, romantic language but that romanticism dares to question the esssence of the American Dream.

To begin, Wilson contrasts the possibilities from fresh land against the backdrop of violence in the American Civil War. When describing life on the land, anticipation of wealth cultivates a hope in the future whereas the war sows a fear of death. In either case, one has a keen sense of beginning and the future ahead. Yet the reader must remember that beginnings usually result from something else ending; in this case, life in Scotland. How much of the New World is actually new? What have the families brought with them from the old country and does the idea of a new life distract them from realizing that they simply live a life displaced?

Wilson also contrasts Wully's fierce love and hate alongside family values and valuing family. Compare Wully's mother with his new stepmother-in-law. His mother, who has undoubtedly sacrificed everything for the prospect of a better life for her family, concerns herself with family values; primarily marriage before sex and children. She has simply worked too hard for her children to disrespect her efforts by not embracing her method of a quality life. I found it humorous that she would nearly disown Wully for the apparent misstep of sex before marriage but then joyfully relish the relief in finding that the child is not actually his. Remember, no circumstances had changed to warrant such a shift in disposition. Wully is still married and still embraces the responsibility of raising the child as his own. Wully's stepmother-in-law, on the other hand, focuses on realizing the potential of a new life rather than the holding to traditions. I loved her fervor, her independence and confidence in herself and just deserts. Her husband cannot control her, not even with the help of traditional family values, and yet she exudes love, joy and kindness regardless of the person's circumstances. The women truly contrast the conservation of the old life with the freedom of the new in which one's choices do not anchor them away from the possibility of a bright future.

Yet each character's present life pivots on the focal point of a possibilities. All their efforts, from wheat yields to growing families, look to the future rather than the present. Is this not the essence of the American Dream? Of hope? The possible rather than the reality? Wilson's climactic finish centers on a phantom risk to the future and the entire community feels the threat of that risk in different ways. Peter Keith does not even need to be present in order to upset the community. He catalyzes moral discord for Wully, fear or security for Chirstie, and happiness or sadness for Libby Keith. He represents the unknown variable that can disrupt our creative manipulations for the future we desire.

The ending disapppoints me only because it seems abrupt and unnatural to the characters; as if Wilson's publishers enter the story and force her to land a more palletable message to her readers. But to her credit, it does resolve the ever-present anxiety about futures and forces the characters to focus rather on who they are rather than on where they're going.

[Maple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nomadic SA Chick's Book Reviews

Summary
Wully is in love with Christie, but doesn't realize it he's about tp return to the fight in the Civil War. Wully promises Christie that as soon as he returns they will get married and start their lives together. Christie is excited about her future. Though her father is recently deceased, and her mother is severely depressed, Christie carries on with her days, caring for her younger siblings, and waiting for Wully's return. Wully is shocked he he comes home to find that Christie is not the sweet loving girl he left behind. She's not scared and pregnant with another man's child. This does not matter to Wully, he loves Christie unconditionally, and follows through with his promise, even if it means taking credit for Christie's baby and shaming his family's name.

Review
I had to talk myself into picking this book up. I made the mistake of reading reviews before had and saw so much hate for this book. I was dreading what was between the covers. I am so happy the dread was pointless. I loved this book. Wilson decorates the pages with beautiful and heart-felt prose that make your heart ache for Christie and fall in love with Wully for being such a good human.
Growing up in Iowa and spending a lot of time in small towns, I can tell you that this is still very reflective of life there. Neighbors know each other, care about one another, and community actually means something. So does someone's family name and reputation; these things are more important than your credit score. Much like Wilson's Iowa town, small town Iowans look out for one another.

Ratings (based on a 10 point scale)
Quality of Writing - 8
Pace - 6
Plot Development - 7
Characters - 8
Enjoyability - 9
Insightfulness - 6
Ease of Reading - 7
Photos/Illustrations - N/A
Overall Rating - 5 out of 5 stars

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

The easiest way to summarize this likeable melodrama would be to focus on the male protagonist, Wully McLaughlin. The oldest boy in a family fairly recently immigrated from Scotland to Iowa, Wully is a reluctant Union soldier who comes home after the war's end, discovers the sweetheart he had been dreaming of marrying has been raped by another man (Wully's cousin), and then begins a family with this dark cloud of sexual abuse behind him.

However, I think a better summary would focus on the older women who weave in and out of Wully's life and are, without a doubt, the most richly drawn personages. Wully's mother, Isobel, who loves her son a little more forwardly than an outside observer might think appropriate, is the real star of the book, and Wully's stepmother-in-law, Barbara, executes a fabulously entertaining feminist rebellion against her good-for-nothing country husband.

Wilson excels at infusing her story of rural Iowa in the late 1860s with regionalist charm, but her aim exceeds her grasp. She seems to want to draw some kind of link between this story of the sprawling McLaughlin clan in the 1870s and the world she herself knows in the early 1920s, but this is only suggested in odd paragraphs that interrupt the first few chapters and discuss a future relationship between one of Wully's brothers (Andrew) and the heirs of the man who drives Wully home during his leave from the war. Maybe this is cleared up in the sequel?

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I tried, I really did.

After seeking out and purchasing a rather pricey used copy (because not a single edition was to be found within my entire inter-library loan system) it only made sense to give it every opportunity to prove itself. Sadly, it turned out to be a disappointment. The writing was so awkward and choppy and the characters acted inconsistently enough that I found it difficult to conceive how it won the 1924 Pulitzer for fiction. What is perfectly clear, however, is why it has now sunk into obscurity.

If you have an opportunity to read it and don't mind spending your time on a mildly interesting story and mediocre writing it's possible it might be worth the effort but I'd avoid going to a lot of trouble to put your hands on it.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable, easy read about two young people, Wullie and Chirstie, who fall in love. Set in the 1860s in a Scottish community in Iowa, Wullie comes back from the civil war to find Chirstie has been raped and is pregnant. He decides to marry her, claiming the baby as his own and keeping Chirstie's rape a secret. The novel provides good descriptions of the hard working and harsh life of the Scots immigrant farmers. I liked Chirstie's step mother, Barbara McNair, enjoying her battle with her husband to have a house built that was a little better than Wullie's house!

This book won the 1924 Pulitzer Prize. It's a sweet story with likeable characters and an interesting plot. It's a well told, simply written, entertaining story.

[Sbussey · Rating 4 out of 5]

From 1915, the account of a Scottish immigrant family settling in Iowa when it was still the frontier. Not sure why I never heard of this book or this author, but I thought this was surprising. It was easy to read, had strong characters (especially strong female characters, for the time period), represents a historical moment. It might not be strong on lists because it is more realist/naturalist, when the novel form is shifting to modernism. But I would gladly assign this over "The Octopus" or any Steinbeck...

[Linda M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can check another Pulitzer winner off my list. Young Wully McLaughlin comes home from the Civil War to find that Chirstie, the girl he loves and has planned to marry, is pregnant and faces certain disgrace. Wully quickly marries his love and shares in her scandal because he knows it will be better for her and the child to have him to share in the blame instead of having the truth come out. It's hard at times to understand the dialect of the characters and the writing isn't stellar, but I thoroughly enjoyed the story.