Without a Home

by Edward Payson Roe

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341 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1881

About the author

Reverend Edward Payson Roe (1838-1888) was an American novelist born in Moodna, Orange County, New York. He studied at Williams College and at Auburn Theological Seminary. In 1862 he became chaplain of the Second New York Cavalry, U.S. V., and in 1864 chaplain of Hampton Hospital, in Virginia. In 1866-74 he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he moved to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, where he devoted himself to the writing of fiction and to horticulture. During the American Civil War he wrote weekly letters to the New York Evangelist, and subsequently lectured on the war and wrote for periodicals. Amongst his works are Barriers Burned Away (1872), What Can She Do? (1873), Opening a Chestnut Burr (1874), Near to Nature's Heart (1876), A Face Illumined (1878), Success with Small Fruits (1880), A Day of Fate (1880), Without a Home (1881), An Unexpected Result (1883), His Sombre Rivals (1884), A Young Girl's Wooing (1884), An Original Belle (1885), He Fell in Love with His Wife (1886), Driven Back to Eden (1886) and The Earth Trembled (1887).

Reviews

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded up from two and a half stars.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long book about a well-to-do family brought down to the worse poverty ever when father loses his job. When father takes up with opium, the downward spiral quickens. The heroine, older daughter Mildred Jocelyn, is so filled with pride that I do not like her at all. The mother is okay and 2nd daughter Belle is "real." Millie is just too good to be true. I don't know how it will end -- living in one of the worst tenement houses in NYC in the late 19th century, I am getting a feeling for how the poorest of the poor lived, and also about how dreadful an addiction to opium can be. More to come, after I finish it. In spite of great hardship and the deaths of many, our heroine still seems not to my liking -- the praise heaped on her seemed too much -- the delicacy of her beauty seemed more to me to be an excuse for people to "baby" her. I liked learning about the use of opium. The appendix at the end of the book about the hardship of working "shopgirls," having to stand behind the counter for up to 12 hours a day made me realize that life was hard if one didn't have money. I believe that the distinction now for the working class is that life is hard, but most definitely not as hard now as then -- living in tenement housing was not easy. Many working people now have so much more than those at the end of the 19th century! Anyway, even tho I liked it, I would not recommend it without caveats. It would be interesting to learn if anyone else felt about Millie as I did.