Exceptional!

      The book had to be good because Hillary sent it to me and she knows literature! Good? It was exceptional! When have I read a book that I enjoyed as much as Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker? (Spoiler alert: don't read the introduction by James Welch because he gives away the plot 😠.) The book was first published in 1943 and reissued by Bison Press in 1992.

       The book's setting is a Montana wheat ranch (I'd call a farm) the University of Minnesota and a country school. The protagonist, Ellen, is an only child who grows up on the ranch and goes to the University when she graduates from high school. It's her father's insistence that she attend college. Ellen is a very winsome character and the story revolves around her awakenings to family life. Her parents met during WW I, when her father was in the American Army in Russia, is wounded and nursed back to health by a young Russian woman that he marries. After the war they homestead in Montana. Naturally I could relate to the farming issues, both good and bad.

       Ellen teaches for awhile, at a remote, one room, school where she lives in the 'teacherage' connected to the school. Her school experiences resonated and are very authentic reminding me of the eight years I spent as a student in a one room school. One of the events was a terrible blizzard where she kept the students at school overnight. It reminded me of the time a blizzard started when I was in school with my siblings. Our school had neither radio nor telephone. Dad came to get us in the blizzard with a bobsled pulled by a team of horses. He was taking no chances on us getting lost in the snow.

      With many things to recommend it there is also a fascinating study in family systems. Ellen's discovery of the reality of her parents and their relationship is fascinating. Ellen's Mom, Anna Petrovna, a Russian peasant, became a favorite character for me.

       Walker's prose is so compelling it was hard to put the book down. She's written at least a dozen other books but this is the only available through the Hennepin County Library. Have any of you readers read any books by her?  She wrote 9 of her 13 novels will living in Montana. This book gets five stars out of five!  (Thanks again, Hillary.)

Takk for alt

Al