The Seasons of Doubt

In 1873, quiet Mary Harrington's husband, drunk and violent, leaves their remote Nebraska homestead. She and her five-year-old child wait for him to return. But three months later, he is still gone. By then they are starving. They have no choice but to ride out into the frigid Nebraska winter, searching for help. They stumble into a struggling community of a handful of people. Mary squats in an abandoned building and begs for work at the Emigrant rooming house. Weeks go by; they have no food but that which Mary can steal from slop buckets and the unguarded rooming house’s cellar. A cook's job comes available. Mary can do it, but the law won't allow her to be paid without her husband's approval. So, in exchange for Mary's labor, the rooming house proprietor offers two bowls of food a day.Barely surviving, Mary and her son continue to hope for her husband to return. Some time later, he passes through, now a drover of longhorns. He raises his whip at her, spits, and turns away. She realizes, then, she can rely on no one but herself. Alone, she must find a way to survive, and care for her child. But in a hostile time when women are denied any rights, how can she? With determination, wile and grit, Mary will find a way, and in the short time she has, prove herself an intrepid mother and a woman of courage. Written in the rich and elegant tone of Willa Cather, “The Seasons of Doubt” describes the hardscrabble life and courage of a prairie mother to survive and raise her child.