The Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (1927)
Author: Glenway Wescott
Title: The Grandmothers: A Family Portrait
Pub Date: 1927
Genre: Fiction
Arguably the greatest Wisconsin novel ever written, Glenway Wescott's oft-overlooked classic novel offers up a detailed portrait of three generations of the Tower family, emigrants to Wisconsin in the 1840s. The family history is related by young Alwyn Tower in the 1920s, as he prepares to leave Wisconsin for the expatriate life in Europe. We discover a family of unfulfilled promises, smart and promising men and women who, for various reasons, never quite succeed in life or gain full possession of the ambitions. The men especially fare poorly, while the women end up better off for the most part. Yet the novel is by no means dour, and Wescott succeeds in giving his readers a broad cross-section of the American experience through his family-sized sample.
Similar books available through the Library:
Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag
O Pioneers! and My Antonia by Willa Cather
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Comments