The Dollmaker

A REDISCOVERED AMERICAN CLASSIC - A MOVING, ENDURING TRAGEDY  Gertie is the young mother of five children - uneducated, determined, strong. Her only ambition is to own her own small farm in the Kentucky hills where she lives, to become self-sufficient and free.  Whenever the struggle to live off the land eases, her inarticulate imagination takes its freedom and flies. Because Gertie is also an artist, a sculptor of wood and creator of beautiful handmade dolls.  When the family is forced to move to industrial Detroit, with its pre-fab houses, appliances bought on credit and neighbours pressed in on every side, life turns into an incomprehensible, lonely nightmare. Gertie realises she must adapt to a life where land, family and creativity are replaced by just one thing: the constant need for money.        `A masterworkâ ¦ A superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness' New York Times

Dollmaker

Literature & Fiction

Arnow, Harriette

Contemporary

Scribner

Strong-willed, self-reliant Gertie Nevel's peaceful life in the Kentucky hills was devastated by the brutal winds of change. Uprooted form their backwoods home, she and her family were thrust into the confusion and chaos of wartime Detroit. And in a pitiless world of unendurable poverty, Gertie would battle fiercely and relentlessly to protect those things she held most precious--her children, her heritage...and her triumphant ability to create beauty in the suffocating shadow of ugliness and despair.

Literary

AVON.

Book by Arnow, Harriette Louisa Simpson

Bt Bound

In the early years of this century, Burnside, Kentucky, was a bustling community perched on and above the floodplain formed by the Cumberland River and the South Fork. It was a center for shipping by rail and steamboat packet, and its lumber mills sent their products all over the world. The lower part of the town―once the heart of its economic being―now lies beneath the waters of Lake Cumberland, and the remaining streets above no longer resound with the clatter and roar of older and busier times. Harriet Simpson Arnow moved to Burnside with her parents and sisters in 1913, a few months before her fifth birthday. She recreates for us the sights and sounds of the town as she sets her childhood memories against the history of the region from the days of early settlers until Wolfe Creek Dam was built, creating the hundred-mile-long Lake Cumberland. Arnow charms the reader with her account of what it was like to be child in such a place and time, describing the fascination of the general stores of the town, the grand sight of the Seven Gables Hotel, the excitement of school, and the ever-interesting river and railroad traffic, all of which lent diversion to a life that sometimes seemed overburdened with household chores and errand running. Though much of old Burnside has disappeared, the way of life Arnow describes is an important part of the fabric of the history of Kentucky and the nation. Evoking vivid scenes of river and railroad, lumber mill and country store, Arnow recreates for us with great artistry a long-vanished place and time.

Old Burnside (Memoir of a Southern Girlhood)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University Press of Kentucky

The Dollmaker was originally published in 1954 to immediate success and critical acclaim. In unadorned and powerful prose, Harriette Arnow tells the unforgettable and heartbreaking story of the Nevels family and their quest to preserve their deep-rooted values amidst the turmoil of war and industrialization. When Gertie Nevels, a strong and self-reliant matriarch, follows her husband to Detroit from their countryside home in Kentucky, she learns she will have to fight desperately to keep her family together. A sprawling book full of vividly drawn characters and masterful scenes, The Dollmaker is a passionate tribute to a woman's love for her children and the land.

United States

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Books by Arnow, Harriette

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Arnow, Harriette. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dollmaker

The Dollmaker

The Dollmaker

Old Burnside (Memoir of a Southern Girlhood)

The Dollmaker