When I first read this series about ten years ago, I couldn't stop thinking about it for days, weeks even. This is the first of a really wonderful trilogy about a family that settles in Ohio as the frontier changes from thick forest (The Trees), to farms (The Fields), to small rural communities (The Town).The Trees begins with the Luckett family trudging into the thick woods of Ohio in the 1700s, fleeing Pennsylvania because Worth, Jary's husband and the kids' father, decided that the game had gone west and he aimed to follow. As they travel deep into the woods, following a trace, the trees close in so thickly that Jary wonders when she'll ever see the sun again. But Sayward, the eldest daughter of Worth and Jary, is the main character, and we soon begin to see mostly through her eyes, feeling her feelings and thinking her thoughts as we read. Maybe Sayward's experiences strike a chord with me because she faces straight-on so many things I pray I never have to deal with. How, I wonder, would I cope? What is it like to live when every meal, every garment, and every utensil is hard-earned and hand-made? What is it like to grieve for someone, even as you dig their "bury-hole"? What is it like to live in a time and place where people took care to lay their loved ones to rest with their feet to the east, ready to rise on resurrection day? What would it be like to be smart and clever, but totally illiterate, not even knowing the alphabet?Books like this one don't just open our eyes to a time long gone, they open our eyes to our own time, which stands in stark contrast. Our lives are so easy now, but the ease came with a cost to character.A word of caution to my young Goodreads friends: this book is gritty and sometimes raw. There is no softening about sin and it's sorrows. And the frontier life is not idealized in any way. So read with caution, or not at all until you have been through several more summers and winters. It is good to save some books, and you will probably like it better in ten years or more anyway.The book closes with,"That's how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take the one with the other, for that's the way it ran."The Trees is not an overwhelmingly sad book, but along with the joy comes sorrows.
The first instalment of Conrad Richter's The Awakening Land Trilogy, titled The Trees, comes across like Little House on the Prairie if written by Cormac McCarthy: it's a dark, devilish tale of what happens when the Luckett family, in the late 1700s, blazes their way through a sea of thick, sky-blackening trees, in America's uninhabited backwoods to settle as hermits in the Ohio Valley.Though told through a variety of viewpoints, we are mainly shown the world via the eyes of the Luckett's eldest daughter Sayward, who has to more-or-less raise her brothers and sisters as the family clan is met with a series of hardships. Death, disease, hunger, cold winters, the mysterious disappearance of a family member, the running away of some others, the nervous collapse of yet another, as well as some ghostly apparitions are just some of the challenges Sayward must face as we watch her fight to keep her family (or what's left of it) alive as she herself grows into womanhood.Throughout the novel, we see the Lucketts eventually be joined in the forest by others, turning their plotted land into a small commune. By the novel's end, the land begins to "awaken", with the civilians of the backwoods clearing away the trees, thus progressing from hunters to farmers. It's a terrific start to the trilogy, being slow-moving and subtle, but simmering with an unearthly magic.
What do You think about The Trees (1991)?
Lovely, lovely book. Compelling, authentic, poetic. The language and the true dialect drew me in, but the characters kept me there. Richter shows respect for these people. He doesn't judge them and they don't judge each other. No time for that in the world these folks inhabit. This story of those that braved the wildness to settle America sheds light on the drudgery, the hope, the real daily life of those hardy souls. So, read it for the language and the history. But here's what makes it 5 stars. Sayward Luckett is one of the greatest female characters in all of American fiction. Who knew I would be find her in a 1940's book about the 1790's written by a man. She will stick with me for a very long time. "Let the good come, Sayward thought, for the bad would come of its own self. That's how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that's the way it ran."
—Leslie
For better or for worse, The Trees is a very accurate portrayal of what life on the early American frontier must have been like. The book’s historical accuracy in respect to the linguistics of early American pioneers is astounding, but tested my patience thoroughly. It took me a while to realize that a “trencher” is a table, or that “butts” refers to tree trunks. The writing of Conrad Richter is, at times, undecipherable or even grammatically wrong; Take this sentence for instance: “It had black frost early in October that the axe couldn’t chop the ground.” I assure you, I did not make a typo; that is actually how the sentence is. I guess there must have been more lax grammar rules in the 1940’s because that is unacceptable nowadays. Language barrier aside, the book tells an interesting story. Most of the characters tended to get on my nerves. The mother is downright depressing, after the family moves all she says is stuff like “I don’t keep track of the days no more” or “I hain’t noticed, my eyes kain’t see so good here.” I did not connect very well with any of the characters, and was almost grateful whenever one left the story.If you are interested by the early 19th century American frontier, then you will probably find this book to be endlessly fascinating. I don’t think that The Trees is a bad book (it seems most critics gave it very high praise), I just had a few too many problems with.
—Kevin Reilly
Richter's writing brought to mind the rhythms and cadences of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Yearling -- a pure reading of the time and state, without one glimmer of the revisionist's eye. The novel enveloped me in the pioneering world of 1790, middle America, and I did not emerge until it rung its last stroke of the axe, as the clearings began to show face in the crowded landscape of trees. It felt to me a most accurate representation of what pioneering must have truly been like -- bugs, and lice and the oppressive push of the trees for some; wilderness and freedom and pure elemental nature, for others. Even within the pioneering spirit, there lay the dichotomy of town versus wilderness: those who longed to carve out their space out of it, and those who sought to submerge themselves within it. On both counts, Richter does justice to those brave men and women who insinuated themselves into the frontier, on their own terms.
—Julie
