Lesle's Reviews > Now in November

Nature and Farming no great ebb and flow of the earth. They do not live a majestic life. Their days are spent overwhelmed by a great deal of little things. It stops them from living a fullfilled life. The days are never ending and a job is never completed while each day turns into a month and into a year dragging by. This life is snatching all that is good and necessary to make them feel like they are living. Nature gives them no hope but they must endure and so...they must hope. Beauty of nature and farming in all it's twisted forms, always mixed with what is sour or what is desert heat of the sun. There is no question of what the family needs to do, it is as plain as is the dried up and shriveled cornfields. They are not trapped in this world any more than any one else trying to make a living and home for their families. How much of what tragedy came to them is their own doing? Could they have done something different for a better outcome. The drought? Gods doing? World agianst them. Was it deliberate? Are they against themselves? Was the road taken with it banks too high just too much! My interputation of page 226.

The novel starts out 10 years after the farm is started by a family of five. No boys just 3 girls. The father works the farm with one single helper. The girls personalities are so different. Margaret and Merle help mother with the household chores. Kerrin the oldest is quite the girl, obnoxious and not a family team player to a mental mess. The Depression period is felt hard from the drought. Not being able to sell the only thing they really had to make money on...milk. Slopped to the pigs and given away until finally the buyers decided to pay a tad bit more. They sell the cows for $2 not a head the whole group! Loss from fire brings everything to ten fold within the months that follow.

Now in November won the Pulitzer Prize for a debut novel by Josephine W Johnson in 1935 at the age of 24. The descriptions are beautiful of the surrounding woods, flowers and birds.
"It was hot still, and ink-blotter clouds messed up the sky but brought no rain. The spring green was like green sunlight or green fire more lovely than just leaves-- and there were yellow clouds of sassafras along the pasture."

4 1/2 Stars!