Editorial Reviews
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
In the opening scene of The Dollmaker a rough-hewn, uneducated woman performs a tracheotomy on her dying son, guided only by her love for her child and rural common sense. Thus we are introduced to Gertie Nevells, one of the most amazing women in literature. Gertie is a powerful, compassionate woman, a wood sculptor, a mother who talks to her daughter's imaginary playmates. Her one dream is to buy her own farm in the backwoods of the South and live there with her husband and children. But World War II intervenes, and as a good wife she must take her children and follow her husband to Detroit, where he has been put to work in a war factory. In the city, Gertie fights desperately to keep her family together and maintain their rural values, but it's a hard fight and even her flowers seem to know it: "There was something frantic in their blooming, as if they knew that frost was near and then the bitter cold. They'd lived through all the heat and noise and stench of summertime, and now each widely opened flower was like a triumphant cry, 'We will, we will make seed before we die.' " A big book, full of vividly drawn characters and masterful scenes, The Dollmaker is both a passionate denunciation of industrialization and war, and a tribute to a woman's love for her children and the land. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
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.
The Dollmaker,Harriette Arnow,Harper Perennial,0060529342,Fiction,Fiction - General,Literary,Literature: Classics,Fiction / General
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