THE OLD ASHBURN PLACE by Margaret Flint Winner of the Dodd, Mead
Pictorial Review prize for the best first novel of 1935 As the
second oldest member of the Ashburn "tribe," Charlie Ashburn takes
his family responsibilities seriously. He toils tirelessly to keep
the rural Maine farmstead going, honoring his mother's legacy by
supporting, along with his siblings, the college education of
brother Alfred and the schooling of others in the clan. In his own
unschooled view, the sacrifices he makes are well worth it if they
produce a household that is "beautiful, entire and clean."
Tranquility shatters, however, when Charlie becomes smitten with a
well-off girl, Marian Parks, and entangled with his brother
Morris's wife, Elsie. While Marian flirts and tantalizes, Elsie
ensnares him, leading to an existential crisis that ultimately
determines Charlie's future. _____________ ABOUT MARGARET FLINT
Margaret "Peg" Flint was born at Orono, Maine in 1891 to Hannah
Ellis Leavitt and Walter Flint. She attended the University of
Maine at Orono and, briefly, Simmons College, majoring first in
biology, then philosophy. She did not enroll for her senior year at
UMO, but she had gained a passion for writing and soon married
fellow student Lester Warner Jacobs, who had graduated with a
degree in civil engineering. She did not earn a degree herself.
Lester Jacobs's civil engineering work in the coal industry and
later for the Army Corps of Engineers relocated the family several
times-to Norfolk, Virginia, Slidell, Louisiana and Bay St. Louis,
Mississippi. She and Lester had six children, three born before
World War I, three after. During the war years, during which her
husband served in the US Army, Margaret lived in her beloved Maine.
Margaret's first novel, The Old Ashburn Place, earned a $10,000
national prize for best first novel of the year in 1935. A phone
call from the publisher, Dodd, Mead & Co., told her she was a
finalist. But the follow-up news of her win came over the airwaves,
announced by Walter Winchell during his radio newscast. The prize
was reported in major papers nationwide, such as the Los Angeles
Times, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and the
Chicago Tribune. The change in her life from obscure housewife to
famous author was as dramatic as it was instantaneous, but her
success was severely offset by the loss of her husband in 1936 to
the after-effects of WWI gassing. The cash prize, however, enabled
her to move the family back to Maine. She renovated the former
Pequawket Inn in West Baldwin, which lies within the large acreage
land-granted to her father's family after the French and Indian
War. Eight more novels and a flood of newspaper and magazine
articles followed. As a novelist, her forte was psychological
insights into family and neighborhood relationships. She was also
noted for her ability to convey the speech patterns of the small
region between Sebago Lake and the New Hampshire border, the
setting for most of her stories. Her books include: The Old Ashburn
Place (1936): Novel of bucolic Maine life Valley of Decision (1937)
Deacon's Road (1938) Breakneck Brook (1939) Back O' the Mountain
(1940) Down the Road A Piece (1941) October Fires (1941) Enduring
Riches (1942) Dress Right, Dress: The Autobiography of a WAC (1943)
Cover art: "And Everything Nice" by Bryce Cameron Liston.
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