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Everton
American Years
AMERICAN YEARS (Prairie State Books) [Oct 01, 1988] Sinclair, Harold
411 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1988
About the author
Harold Sinclair
31 books2 followersHarold Sinclair was born on May 8, 1907 in Chicago, Illinois. When he was about 8 years old he was sent, along with his sister, to stay with an aunt and uncle in Bloomington, Illinois. As a teenager he worked for the Western Union telegraph company. He dropped out of school, moved to Florida and later returned to Chicago and finally back home to Bloomington. He played in Jazz Clubs and followed a Bohemian lifestyle.
While working for a hardware store he wrote his first book, The Journey Home (1936). The book impressed an editor at Doubleday who offered Sinclair a four book contract.
His next three books, The American Years (1938), The Years of Growth (1940) and the Years of Illusion (1941) chronicle the history of the imaginary town of Everton, Illinois, from the 1830s to the 1920s. The history and characters in the trilogy were based on the history of the City of Bloomington.
In 1940 he publish, Westward the Tide, an account of the Illinois campaign of George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War.
More books followed; The Port of New Orleans (1942), Music of Dixie (1952), and a book commissioned by the Bloomington newspaper, The Daily Pantagraph telling the history of the newspaper, Daily Pantagraph 1846-1946 (1976). He also published several short stories, articles and book reviews.
The Horse Soldiers (1956) was a fictionalized account of Illinois Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s daring raid through Mississippi during the Civil War. This book became a bestseller and is best known as the inspiration of the John Ford/John Wayne movie The Horses Soldiers (1959).
His final novel, The Cavalryman (1958), was a sequel to Horse Soldiers. It was not well received by critics or readers. The book was optioned for a possible television series. That project did not come to fruition.
Sinclair died on May 24, 1966.
While working for a hardware store he wrote his first book, The Journey Home (1936). The book impressed an editor at Doubleday who offered Sinclair a four book contract.
His next three books, The American Years (1938), The Years of Growth (1940) and the Years of Illusion (1941) chronicle the history of the imaginary town of Everton, Illinois, from the 1830s to the 1920s. The history and characters in the trilogy were based on the history of the City of Bloomington.
In 1940 he publish, Westward the Tide, an account of the Illinois campaign of George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War.
More books followed; The Port of New Orleans (1942), Music of Dixie (1952), and a book commissioned by the Bloomington newspaper, The Daily Pantagraph telling the history of the newspaper, Daily Pantagraph 1846-1946 (1976). He also published several short stories, articles and book reviews.
The Horse Soldiers (1956) was a fictionalized account of Illinois Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s daring raid through Mississippi during the Civil War. This book became a bestseller and is best known as the inspiration of the John Ford/John Wayne movie The Horses Soldiers (1959).
His final novel, The Cavalryman (1958), was a sequel to Horse Soldiers. It was not well received by critics or readers. The book was optioned for a possible television series. That project did not come to fruition.
Sinclair died on May 24, 1966.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 21, 2017
“This is, I think,” explained the author to an interviewer in 1947, “a departure from the usual method.” That departure was to write a novel in which an American town would be the chief character, with the human beings as the background. That novel was American Years by Bloomington writer Harold Sinclair, published in 1938. The book is the first of a trilogy that recounts in fiction the first century of Bloomington, which is disguised in no way but the name he gave it, “Everton.”
That conceit that the town is more than a mere setting for characters’ lives is central to several essential literary works of the Midwest, such as Winesburg, Ohio and Main Street. But such works usually offer characters who embody the town’s virtues or vices. Sinclair dispensed with the emblematic characters and made the town itself the central character.
What made American Years interesting in literary terms is what doomed it in commercial terms. The book was favorably, and on the whole astutely, reviewed. A few historians took issue with Sinclair’s trespass on their turf, in particular Harry E. Pratt, then executive secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield. The consensus among readers seemed to be that it was not quite enough of a novel and not quite enough of a history, and it sold only modestly. Locally, Bloomingtonians reacted badly to American Years; their outrage did not quite mask their hurt feelings.
American Years is available, thanks to the U of I Press, which put out a new edition in 1988. That work features an introduction by Robert Bray, now the R. Forrest Colwell Professor of American Literature at Illinois Wesleyan University, that is worth the price of the book as an introduction to that novel and kindred works. While American Years is arguably the most interesting of Sinclair’s Illinois books because of what he attempted, Paul Angle thought the best of them in terms of what he achieved,being both stirring and historically accurate, was Westward the Tide, a 1940 novel about George Rogers Clark’s Illinois campaign during the American Revolution. Sinclair also was capable of first-rate journalism, the best example of which was The Port of New Orleans. The book that people remember him for, of course, was The Horse Soldiers, which was made into a mediocre movie starring John Wayne.
Apparently the family of Gov. Adlai Stevenson asked Sinclair to do a history of the family newspaper, the Pantagraph, which had been one of the great newspapers of Illinois’ golden age. The bohemian Sinclair was an odd choice for the patrician Stevensons; not surprisingly, they did not care for the result and the work was left unpublished until 1976. Sinclair also wrote a history of the Illinois home front during the Civil War that was never published.
Sinclair died in 1966, not yet 60. Of the several literary artists that this part of the world has coughed up, Sinclair is probably the most conventionally unconventional. Largely self-educated, he loved (and played) jazz, had chronic money troubles, drank too much, was moody and ambivalent about success. And, like so many such men, he found himself a wonderfully intelligent, forgiving, tolerant and adaptable wife; God looks after children and fools and writers, apparently.
This review originally appeared, in somewhat different form, under the title "Town character: The hometown as hero in mid-Illinois books" in Illnois Times, the Springfield weekly, on July 16, 2015.
That conceit that the town is more than a mere setting for characters’ lives is central to several essential literary works of the Midwest, such as Winesburg, Ohio and Main Street. But such works usually offer characters who embody the town’s virtues or vices. Sinclair dispensed with the emblematic characters and made the town itself the central character.
What made American Years interesting in literary terms is what doomed it in commercial terms. The book was favorably, and on the whole astutely, reviewed. A few historians took issue with Sinclair’s trespass on their turf, in particular Harry E. Pratt, then executive secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield. The consensus among readers seemed to be that it was not quite enough of a novel and not quite enough of a history, and it sold only modestly. Locally, Bloomingtonians reacted badly to American Years; their outrage did not quite mask their hurt feelings.
American Years is available, thanks to the U of I Press, which put out a new edition in 1988. That work features an introduction by Robert Bray, now the R. Forrest Colwell Professor of American Literature at Illinois Wesleyan University, that is worth the price of the book as an introduction to that novel and kindred works. While American Years is arguably the most interesting of Sinclair’s Illinois books because of what he attempted, Paul Angle thought the best of them in terms of what he achieved,being both stirring and historically accurate, was Westward the Tide, a 1940 novel about George Rogers Clark’s Illinois campaign during the American Revolution. Sinclair also was capable of first-rate journalism, the best example of which was The Port of New Orleans. The book that people remember him for, of course, was The Horse Soldiers, which was made into a mediocre movie starring John Wayne.
Apparently the family of Gov. Adlai Stevenson asked Sinclair to do a history of the family newspaper, the Pantagraph, which had been one of the great newspapers of Illinois’ golden age. The bohemian Sinclair was an odd choice for the patrician Stevensons; not surprisingly, they did not care for the result and the work was left unpublished until 1976. Sinclair also wrote a history of the Illinois home front during the Civil War that was never published.
Sinclair died in 1966, not yet 60. Of the several literary artists that this part of the world has coughed up, Sinclair is probably the most conventionally unconventional. Largely self-educated, he loved (and played) jazz, had chronic money troubles, drank too much, was moody and ambivalent about success. And, like so many such men, he found himself a wonderfully intelligent, forgiving, tolerant and adaptable wife; God looks after children and fools and writers, apparently.
This review originally appeared, in somewhat different form, under the title "Town character: The hometown as hero in mid-Illinois books" in Illnois Times, the Springfield weekly, on July 16, 2015.
July 16, 2022
Midcentury middlebrow historical fiction and moves right along. It traces the beginning of the town of Everton, Illinois from 1830 to the beginning of the Civil War and there are two more books in this trilogy that continue the story of the town. The odd thing about it is that it is the story of the founding of the town of Bloomington, Illinois (where I've lived for nearly 30 years). It's not clear why the name of the town was changed since the streets and the physical aspects of the town are the same. According to the Introduction the names of some of the inhabitants were changed so as not to make the publisher liable for lawsuits, although that seems unlikely given how much time had passed. What's weird is that these renamed characters interact with real people--Jesse Fell, David Davis, Abe Lincoln, so it's sort of like an alternate dimension. I'm not sure that readers who are not from my area would be bothered by this.
August 12, 2016
I may be prejudiced, but I loved this book because I love the history of Bloomington Illinois.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews