The MacLeod Place

by William H. Armstrong

This is the story of Angus MacLeod, his grandson, Tor, and the land they live on.
The MacLeod farm straddles the gently rolling crest of one of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and spreads out its beautiful patchwork of fields and sheep meadows almost as far as the eye can see.
But this story is set in today's world, which means that the MacLeod land—like land everywhere else today—is in terrible danger. For when a system of federal parks and highways is planned to run along the heights of this very chain of mountains, Tor and Angus MacLeod realize that they may be forced to sell their farm and to lose the old place where their family has had its roots for generations.
How old Angus MacLeod and young Tor struggle to save a part of their heritage from the implacable jaws of the machine age makes a powerful story whose relevance and urgency all young readers will understand.

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

William H. Armstrong (1911 - 1999) was an American children's author and educator, best known for his 1969 Newbery Medal-winning novel, Sounder.

In 1956, at the request of his school headmaster, he published his first book, a study guide called Study Is Hard Work. Armstrong followed this title with numerous other self-help books, and in 1963 he was awarded the National School Bell Award of the National Association of School Administrators for distinguished service in the interpretation of education.

In 1969, Armstrong published his masterpiece, an eight-chapter novel titled Sounder about an African-American sharecropping family. Praised by critics, Sounder won the John Newbery Medal and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1970, and was adapted into a major motion picture in 1972.

Reviews

[Rodney Haydon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one. There is something enjoyable about reading a story of a grandson and his grandfather, and the passing on of traditions while accepting the inevitable march of change.