I've been thinking a lot about what to write about this book, not because it moved me to ponder much but mostly because it DIDN'T move me. It's a story about a family with three girls, a mother, and a father. The father gets laid off at a factory job so he decides to farm. They have to mortgage their farm and this is like a monkey on their backs. The girl, Margret who is the middle child, is the narrator and she often refers to the mortgage as something they have to bear and constantly worry about. The father sounds like an unfeeling, over stressed man. He doesn't seem to care for his girls and is so worried about the farm and all the work that comes with it that he rarely seems happy at all. Luckily his wife is a kind, loving woman who makes up for her husband's lack of emotions. The oldest daughter, Kerrin, is a nutcase, seriously. If I had a psychiatry degree I could diagnose her problem for you, but I don't so all I can say is "cuckoo". The summary on the outside of the book says that she wishes she was a boy, I didn't get that at all. To me she just seemed like she needed to escape the farm and fall in love and go away to a big city where there is lots of excitement and she would kind of blend in with the crowd. As it is she is stuck on the farm and to me it seemed she hates the farm and all the work that goes with it. She becomes a teacher in the nearby town but gets fired because she isn't really teaching at all and is very short wit the students. That's kind of the second to last straw for her. Then the narrator, Margret, is kind of a plain Jane who no one really thinks of but everyone likes. She does her chores and helps out the best she can. The youngest is Merle; everyone loves Merle. She is very quiet and kind and apparently beautiful. A young man Grant comes to live with them and help their Dad work on the farm. Kerrin and Margret fall in love with Grant, but Grant falls in love with Merle and Merle won't have anything to do with Grant in that respect. In fact, Kerrin tries to make a pass at Grant and he didn't respond and that was the very last straw and she ends up running off with her Dad's knife and kills herself.
The family has lots of hardships as the depression comes on. It describes the months of no rain and how it affects their farm and their livelihood. One night a fire breaks out on their property and they all run out to put it out and while they're doing that their mom catches fire and later dies from those injuries. There are stories of neighboring farmers who also have nothing. One is a family who is renting a farm and just can't make ends meet to pay the rent and they are kicked off their property. It's a sad view of life during this stage of the depression and what they had to endure and how they had hope that it would end soon.
I only gave this book two balls of yarn mostly because it was sad, and I think I'm tired of reading sad books. It was also written very abstractly. For the first third of the book I wasn't sure if I was reading about the present or past. Near the end of the book I began to understand the writing and really started enjoying it and then it ended. It was hard for me to feel engaged or to care about the characters. The only character who caused me to feel anything was Kerrin and she only made me uncomfortable. I actually bought this book because it was so hard to find here, but I think it might be one I'll give to the Friends of the Library for the book sale, not my favorite.
