Synopses & Reviews
Strong-willed, self-reliant Gertie Nevels's peaceful life in the Kentucky hills is devastated by the brutal winds of change. Uprooted from her backwoods home, she and her family are thrust into the confusion and chaos of wartime Detroit. And in a pitiless world of unendurable poverty, Gertie will battle fiercely and relentlessly to protect those things she holds most dear -- her children, her heritage . . . and her triumphant ability to create beauty in the suffocating shadow of ugliness and despair.
Review
"Harriet Arnow's brutal, beautiful novel, The Dollmaker, has a permanent effect upon the reader: long after one has put it aside, he is still in the presence of its people, absorbed in their trivial and tragic dilemma, sorting out their mistakes, rearranging their possibilities, pondering upon the fate that makes certain people live certain lives, suffer certain atrocities, while other people only read about them.... Our most unpretentious American masterpiece." Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review
Review
"The depth and power and stature of this enormous book are rare indeed in modern fiction." New York Times
Review
"The Dollmaker has vividness and terrific reality. It is a book to make one think...a story of the strength of the human heart against the bitterestodds.... Deeply sincere and moving." Chicago Tribune
Review
"The Dollmaker's depiction of family life the entangled bonds between parents and children, brothers and sisters is unparalleled in modern fiction." Georgia Review
Synopsis
Strong-willed, self-reliant Gertie Nevels's peaceful life in the Kentucky hills is devastated by the brutal winds of change. Uprooted from her backwoods home, she and her family are thrust into the confusion and chaos of wartime Detroit. And in a pitiless world of unendurable poverty, Gertie will battle fiercely and relentlessly to protect those things she holds most dear -- her children, her heritage . . . and her triumphant ability to create beauty in the suffocating shadow of ugliness and despair.
Synopsis
A masterwork...a superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness.
About the Author
Harriette Arnow was born in 1908 into a family whose roots reached back for five generations of Kentucky's history. From this rich background, she inherited a bountiful storytelling tradition that provided inspiration for her acclaimed novels: Mountain Path, Hunter's Horn, and The Dollmaker, the last considered her masterpiece and a landmark of American fiction. She died in 1986.