The Quarry (Paperback)

Progressively, Mildred Walker is building a substantial and dependable market, and this story of a Vermont household in the period of the Civil War and the years bracketing it will increase that market still further. I liked it for its freshness of viewpoint (there have been too few books picturing Yankee households in the midst of the War between the States); I liked it for its understanding of youth, in the central character, the youngest son who wanted desperately to get into the fight when his brother, John, was killed- but who was turned down; I liked it for the sound psychological awareness of family tensions. There is the hard-bitten, pious father, as tough-fibred as his own Vermont hills; there is the mother, who pours oil on troubled waters, whether the issue concerns her own children or the Virginian daughter-in-law sent North by son Dan to bear her child in his family home. There is Easy, the terrified small Negro, who refuses to go farther on the Underground, once he has found a friendly harbor, and who grows up as virtually one of the family. But chiefly there is the youngest son, Lyman, who emerges as a fully rounded figure, from his small boy days, when he wanted to measure up to his older brothers, through the heartbreak of his failure to get into uniform, his brief excursion into scholastic life at Brown, his blocked romance and eventual marriage and acceptance of the role Fate cast for him. The love story is the least effective part of the book, but so much of it is noteworthy, in a period when sincere and substantial novels are rare, that we can heartily recommend it for a thoughtful story of human experience. (Kirkus Reviews)

In this family saga, generations mine the Vermont earth and come to rest in it. Lyman Converse is too young to fight in the Civil War, but he lives to see his own son enlist in World War I. Through all the years his closest friend is Easy, an escaped black slave who took refuge in his father’s house. Everything Converse values most is gradually lost to time, including the family-owned soapstone quarry. The Quarry invites readers to escape into private lives worth caring about—and to feel the national history that they could not escape. Originally published in 1947 and considered one of Mildred Walker’s richest novels, The Quarry is introduced by Ripley Hugo, Walker’s daughter. Hugo edited, with James Welch, The Real West Marginal Way: A Poet’s Autobiography by Richard Hugo.

General

Imprint:	Bison Books
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	August 1995
First published:	August 1995
Authors:	Mildred Walker
Introduction by:	Ripley Hugo
Dimensions:	203 x 133 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	341
ISBN-13:	978-0-8032-9779-1
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General Books > Fiction > Promotions
LSN:	0-8032-9779-3
Barcode:	9780803297791

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