Synopses & Reviews
Conrad Richter's trilogy of novels The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) trace the transformation of Ohio from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character.
The Fields continues the saga of the Luckett family that began in The Trees. In The Fields, the oldest daughter, Sayward, has begun the long process of carving a small farm out of the forest. She bears eight children and weathers numerous challenges in this novel, which gives an excellent sense of what pioneer life was really like.The trilogy earned Richter immediate acclaim as a historical novelist. The Town won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1951, and The Trees was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection after it was published. Richter also received the 1947 Ohioan Library Medal for the first two volumes of the trilogy.
Review
"(A) tale of the slow battle and eventual victory over the Trees and that relentless forest which even today marches in and takes over an Ohio field that has been left untilled for a year or two...The story is told with a filling of poetry and the picturesque turn of language which characterized the speech of the frontier and can still be heard in the Ohio country districts."
Louis Bromfield
Synopsis
Conrad Richter's trilogy of novels The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) trace the transformation of Ohio from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The trilogy earned Richter immediate acclaim as a historical novelist. Richter received the 1947 Ohioan Library Medal for the first two volumes of the trilogy.
About the Author
Conrad Richter was born in Pennsylvania. His family on his mothers side was identified with the early American scene, and from boyhood on he was saturated with tales and the color of Eastern pioneer days. In 1928 he and his family moved to New Mexico, where his heart and mind were soon captured by the Southwest. The Sea of Grass and The Trees were awarded the gold medal of the Societies of Libraries of New York University in 1942.