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The Dollmaker
Strong-willed, self-reliant Gertie Nevels's peaceful life in the Kentucky hills is devastated by the brutal winds of change. Uprooted from her backwoods home, she and her family are thrust into the confusion and chaos of wartime Detroit. And in a pitiless world of unendurable poverty, Gertie will battle fiercely and relentlessly to protect those things she holds most dear -- her children, her heritage . . . and her triumphant ability to create beauty in the suffocating shadow of ugliness and despair.
608 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
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About the author
Harriette Simpson Arnow
20 books86 followersHarriette Simpson Arnow (July 7, 1908 – March 22, 1986) was an American novelist, who lived in Kentucky and Michigan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 539 reviews
February 7, 2019
If I were the God of Books, then I would create a Book Hell, to which I would consign all the worst, most evil characters, who had caused pain and suffering and altered fates to the good characters by their actions. And Gertie Nevels mother would be the first one there, just so she could burn the longest. And yes, as is so often the case, religion and bible quotations were the catalysts.
This is a long and involved novel, so I won't go into plot details, but Gertie and her five children must leave Kentucky to join her husband in Detroit after Uncle Sam rejects him for WWII, and he goes there to work as a machinist. This is a 600 page novel, so a plot recounting would be too long and involved, but I will say that my heart was ripped apart several times before the end. Gertie Nevels loves her husband and children, but more than anything wants to go home. Her husband Clovis loves his wife and children and believes that his responsibility is to provide for his family. The children "adapt" with varying degrees of success to overcrowded , noisy living conditions in what is essentially a slum. I came to know every member of the family intimately, their dreams and fears and disappointments. I also came to know and respect the other women in the alley, and love their small kindnesses to each other in times of trouble. The need for just a little piece of beauty in their lives was heart-rending, having to settle for the innocence of a newborn baby's expression, lilacs that bloomed in the spring, or flower seeds planted in yards that would be trampled by children playing. As one character says, "we've all got holes, and they all gotta be stuffed with something--liquor, like poor Sophronie, or religion and liquor--it takes 'em both--for Daly, or phenobarbital, like somebody Mrs. Anderson knows."
Other than the family, there were two very special characters here, both of them peripheral. Cassie's imaginary friend Callie Lou has a major role in events, and Wheateye, a wild child neighbor girl, made me smile every time she came on the scene.
One more thing: this review feels inadequate to convey my love for this book, so I'll leave you with this quotation from the afterward by Joyce Carol Oates. "It is a legitimate tragedy, our most unpretentious American masterpiece".
This is a long and involved novel, so I won't go into plot details, but Gertie and her five children must leave Kentucky to join her husband in Detroit after Uncle Sam rejects him for WWII, and he goes there to work as a machinist. This is a 600 page novel, so a plot recounting would be too long and involved, but I will say that my heart was ripped apart several times before the end. Gertie Nevels loves her husband and children, but more than anything wants to go home. Her husband Clovis loves his wife and children and believes that his responsibility is to provide for his family. The children "adapt" with varying degrees of success to overcrowded , noisy living conditions in what is essentially a slum. I came to know every member of the family intimately, their dreams and fears and disappointments. I also came to know and respect the other women in the alley, and love their small kindnesses to each other in times of trouble. The need for just a little piece of beauty in their lives was heart-rending, having to settle for the innocence of a newborn baby's expression, lilacs that bloomed in the spring, or flower seeds planted in yards that would be trampled by children playing. As one character says, "we've all got holes, and they all gotta be stuffed with something--liquor, like poor Sophronie, or religion and liquor--it takes 'em both--for Daly, or phenobarbital, like somebody Mrs. Anderson knows."
Other than the family, there were two very special characters here, both of them peripheral. Cassie's imaginary friend Callie Lou has a major role in events, and Wheateye, a wild child neighbor girl, made me smile every time she came on the scene.
One more thing: this review feels inadequate to convey my love for this book, so I'll leave you with this quotation from the afterward by Joyce Carol Oates. "It is a legitimate tragedy, our most unpretentious American masterpiece".
October 26, 2016
I had been trying to remember the details of this book and the title, I read it years ago and was excited because the setting was in Detroit ( I live just outside Detroit)
After a few years of trying to remember the name of this book, someone just reviewed it on my feed!!
I need to read this again but it is definitely a 5 star read!!!
After a few years of trying to remember the name of this book, someone just reviewed it on my feed!!
I need to read this again but it is definitely a 5 star read!!!
March 27, 2021
A move from the hills of Kentucky to the streets of Detroit is jarring in every way to the Nevels family. The jobs spawned due to WWII at the factories and steel mills are attracting families of all ethnicities. Prejudices abound in the tightly packed housing units rented to the workers for their families, yet they all share some common ground.
Hopes and dreams, many will be dashed. The ability to adapt and fit in will come at a high cost. Gertie yearns to return to Kentucky, but finds herself working at crossed purposes, searching for a way to make do in Detroit for now.
This is a kitten squisher, even in paperback. But I consider my time spent reading it was well worth it. I cannot do it justice here. Onto my favorites shelf it will go, and my thanks to Diane Barnes, whose review of it spoke to me.
Hopes and dreams, many will be dashed. The ability to adapt and fit in will come at a high cost. Gertie yearns to return to Kentucky, but finds herself working at crossed purposes, searching for a way to make do in Detroit for now.
This is a kitten squisher, even in paperback. But I consider my time spent reading it was well worth it. I cannot do it justice here. Onto my favorites shelf it will go, and my thanks to Diane Barnes, whose review of it spoke to me.
June 24, 2024
The Dollmaker is the story of Gertie Nevels, a Kentucky woman who is uprooted from the home that she loves and forced to live in Detroit during the Second World War. It is a tragedy that springs from the loss of agrarian life to industrial labor, the misunderstandings and lack of communications between spouses, and the burying of the artistic spirit and individuality beneath the struggle to simply exist.
There are dozens of ideas in this book that could be discussed and debated at length, but what kept coming to the fore for me was the way one life, one person, can be smothered in the crowd of humanity, and how much humanity itself suffers for this every time it happens. Life in Detroit is a nightmare for Gertie, but not only for Gertie; the alley she lives in is peopled with lives being beaten down and wasted. The factions that divide these people are much less obvious to the reader than the squalid ties that bind them. The contrast between the deprivations of the farm life that begins the novel and the deprivations of the life Gertie finds in Detroit are stark, and while Kentucky is not paradise, it would appear to be when weighed against Detroit.
There is also the religious element that runs through the book: “Religious” in the broadest sense of the word. For Gertie is searching for God, for Christ, and even for Judas. She looks to understand her fate and whether her choices are truly her own or ordained by some higher power. Indeed, there are times when I wondered where God is in the lives of so many helpless and vulnerable people. As is usually the case, the people who most profess to speak in His name are the least like Him.
My heart was broken so many times during the reading of this novel that it felt sometimes as if there were an iron band squeezing it. It is in excess of 600 pages and I strongly feel that not a word is wasted. Right into the Favorites folder with this one, with my only complaint being that the print in the version I was reading was insufferably small for these old eyes. I suppose I will need to be on the lookout for a copy with larger print, since I can easily see the need to read it again someday.
There are dozens of ideas in this book that could be discussed and debated at length, but what kept coming to the fore for me was the way one life, one person, can be smothered in the crowd of humanity, and how much humanity itself suffers for this every time it happens. Life in Detroit is a nightmare for Gertie, but not only for Gertie; the alley she lives in is peopled with lives being beaten down and wasted. The factions that divide these people are much less obvious to the reader than the squalid ties that bind them. The contrast between the deprivations of the farm life that begins the novel and the deprivations of the life Gertie finds in Detroit are stark, and while Kentucky is not paradise, it would appear to be when weighed against Detroit.
There is also the religious element that runs through the book: “Religious” in the broadest sense of the word. For Gertie is searching for God, for Christ, and even for Judas. She looks to understand her fate and whether her choices are truly her own or ordained by some higher power. Indeed, there are times when I wondered where God is in the lives of so many helpless and vulnerable people. As is usually the case, the people who most profess to speak in His name are the least like Him.
My heart was broken so many times during the reading of this novel that it felt sometimes as if there were an iron band squeezing it. It is in excess of 600 pages and I strongly feel that not a word is wasted. Right into the Favorites folder with this one, with my only complaint being that the print in the version I was reading was insufferably small for these old eyes. I suppose I will need to be on the lookout for a copy with larger print, since I can easily see the need to read it again someday.
February 17, 2019
6★
My response to this devastating work of literary art was no different to how I felt upon closing the pages of a John Steinbeck or Wallace Stegner. It will forever remain in my heart and soul and earns a place on my virtual 6 stars shelf.
My response to this devastating work of literary art was no different to how I felt upon closing the pages of a John Steinbeck or Wallace Stegner. It will forever remain in my heart and soul and earns a place on my virtual 6 stars shelf.
December 18, 2023
5***
Mrs Scott, my old English teacher, must have had The Dollmaker in mind when she said " every time you read a book you live a life". I lived several during this book. It's hefty and it took me a while to get through, but it's up there with a select few on my favourite shelf. Something happens midway through the book that hit me like a ten tonne truck (Smiths quote) and I may never recover from that . The Guardian describes it as " a book of biblical intensity". That's a fair shout. The 5 star GR thing isn't good enough for The Dollmaker. I can't review it to be honest, but I can thank both Harriette Simpson Arnow and Mrs Scott for making me a wiser, better person .
Mrs Scott, my old English teacher, must have had The Dollmaker in mind when she said " every time you read a book you live a life". I lived several during this book. It's hefty and it took me a while to get through, but it's up there with a select few on my favourite shelf. Something happens midway through the book that hit me like a ten tonne truck (Smiths quote) and I may never recover from that . The Guardian describes it as " a book of biblical intensity". That's a fair shout. The 5 star GR thing isn't good enough for The Dollmaker. I can't review it to be honest, but I can thank both Harriette Simpson Arnow and Mrs Scott for making me a wiser, better person .
May 29, 2022
Sometimes great literature hurts. From the opening pages, I knew that Gertie would break my heart. The Dollmaker is about what happens when Gertie is forced to leave her beloved rural Kentucky for the terrifying, filthy, noisy, chaotic and impoverished world of a Detroit slum. Because Gertie expresses herself through her wood carving, her thoughts at times are an inchoate jumble - although she sees what is important with crystal clarity. And because of the "hillbilly" dialect the reader must slow down with her as she experiences her daily life. A brilliant character study as well as a piercing critique of American culture.
January 30, 2008
My Appalachian Writers professor mentioned that she knew of a few colleagues who were forming a club for people who could only read The Dollmaker once. I might be in that club. This book is long, but so rich and so well-written that I would love to read it again, especially from a spiritual/biblical perspective. On the other hand, there is such tragedy that this book takes an emotional commitment, one I can't imagine allowing myself to make again any time soon. This book is bigger than its genre and I would hate for someone to miss it because they don't appreciate "Appalachian" literature.
January 11, 2008
One of my favorite novels.This book still haunts me.
For regional writers: a fine use of dialect, without creating or living up to stereotypical renderings of characters from Appalachia.
For students of American literature: a rich, meaty example of the literary movement of natural determinism, ala Ellen Glasgow.
For those with Appalachian roots: It'll make you miss yer kin somethin fierce.
For regional writers: a fine use of dialect, without creating or living up to stereotypical renderings of characters from Appalachia.
For students of American literature: a rich, meaty example of the literary movement of natural determinism, ala Ellen Glasgow.
For those with Appalachian roots: It'll make you miss yer kin somethin fierce.
October 24, 2009
This book was depressing, didactic, full of despair and in parts, disturbingly graphic (and this review is brought to you by the letter D). That said, it was an amazing book and I can't believe I made it to this advanced age without reading it. A Kentucky farmwoman and her children reluctantly follow her husband to Detroit during WWII, where he works at one of the auto factories for the war effort. No kidding, these people can outJoad the Joads any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. Everything about the rural experience is good, and everything about the urban experience is poisonous. Plus, all the dialogue is written out in Kentucky hill dialect. I am sure my encouraging description is making people want to read this, but seriously, it was one of those books that I couldn't put down. By rights, it should be too heavy-handed to enjoy, but the writing was breathtaking and it really succeeds in making you feel like you are right there, suffering through Detroit winters and lock-outs and war department telegrams and debt and agony.
Grade: A++
Recommended: To people who might enjoy wallowing in a dismal family saga, people who like lots of domestic detail about homefront experiences, and especially to anyone interested in the rural emigration sparked by WWII, which I always feel you don't hear nearly enough about. Reconstruction and the Depression hog all the rural exodus stuff, I think.
Grade: A++
Recommended: To people who might enjoy wallowing in a dismal family saga, people who like lots of domestic detail about homefront experiences, and especially to anyone interested in the rural emigration sparked by WWII, which I always feel you don't hear nearly enough about. Reconstruction and the Depression hog all the rural exodus stuff, I think.
March 29, 2009
I read this book when I was 10 or 11 and cried all the way through it. I was mad at my mother for letting me read it because it was so sad, but later in life realized this book helped to shape me into the person I became. I have looked for this book off and on over the last 40 plus years and am very glad to see it is still in print and people are reading it. This truly was one of the best lessons about life my mother taught me.
February 27, 2021
I was surely too young for the content when I read this, but found the paperback around the house after the Jane Fonda movie came out in the 80s, and my parent, who worked in a steel mill just on the outskirts of Detroit, where we lived (also just by some train tracks - see where I am going with this?) and where the novel is also set, became kind of obsessed with it. (I thought, “Hey, it’s about dolls, sounds great!” - oops, not quite!) I was definitely semi-traumatized by the book, which I think I reread a number of times, but even then was able to recognize that it was a pretty great novel. Would love to reread it today!
October 25, 2016
This was a book I read in college over 30 years ago and I still remember it. It was well written, but you may need to take anti depressants after you are done.
October 19, 2024
There are writers who offer an abundance of minutiae, sometimes getting so lost in the weeds that you think you'll never find your way out. Some can carry this off, and some leave me looking for exits. Arnow left me gasping for air in the best of all possible ways. The details, the authentic dialect, the attention to sensory input, all made for an immersion into the uprooting of this family from the farmlands of Kentucky to the industrialized neighborhood of Detroit during the war. There could not be a more stark difference in habitat, and I felt all of it down to my bones.
I saw and felt the dissonance, the grief, the despair, the determination, and the confusion Gertie experienced as she moved from the familiar to the unknown, herding her children before her as she learned entirely new ways to live, socialize and survive. Arnow creates a claustrophobic atmosphere and a teeming microcosm of a world turned upside down by war and dislocation; an overcrowded and marginal community where small kindnesses might be the very thing that keeps you alive, and a small miscalculation might be the thing that takes you out, or where a sudden strike might be the difference between paying the rent or not.
This story had its share of tragedy and near misses, but it also had everyday pleasures and surprises and heart-warming and amusing moments, captured like a Norman Rockwell scene come alive. Good, bad, or ugly, this story was ALIVE. This is a story that captures the very real trials many have endured, and continue to endure when life events bigger than we are push us sideways.
I saw and felt the dissonance, the grief, the despair, the determination, and the confusion Gertie experienced as she moved from the familiar to the unknown, herding her children before her as she learned entirely new ways to live, socialize and survive. Arnow creates a claustrophobic atmosphere and a teeming microcosm of a world turned upside down by war and dislocation; an overcrowded and marginal community where small kindnesses might be the very thing that keeps you alive, and a small miscalculation might be the thing that takes you out, or where a sudden strike might be the difference between paying the rent or not.
This story had its share of tragedy and near misses, but it also had everyday pleasures and surprises and heart-warming and amusing moments, captured like a Norman Rockwell scene come alive. Good, bad, or ugly, this story was ALIVE. This is a story that captures the very real trials many have endured, and continue to endure when life events bigger than we are push us sideways.
November 20, 2016
I just saw this book on GR and remembered how very much I loved it. I read it soo many years ago-but as soon as I saw Gertie's name(main character) scenes from the book immediately popped into my head. The 5*s I give this book are in a different category than the 5*s I give to many other books.
I don't know if this book will stand the test of time -but I do know that when I read the book it totally knocked me out!!
I don't know if this book will stand the test of time -but I do know that when I read the book it totally knocked me out!!
July 23, 2024
I have had this book sitting on my shelf for several years now knowing that many GR friends have raved and rated this among their favorites. I am glad to have taken this in hand and immersed myself into the story of Gertie Nevels– a woman who must shift and uproot her body, mind and soul from her home on a farm in Kentucky to the city streets of Detroit, Michigan. It is a heartbreaking story of searching for what is lost and left behind (the familiar and the known) among the strangeness and unknowingness of the place one has been unwillingly brought. In the backdrop of WW2, Gertie and her children must adjust, amend, transform and revoke all they know in order to survive in a place completely foreign to them.
From the beauty of the hills of Kentucky where Gertie’s family lived off of the land as stewards who only understood a lifestyle of growing, producing, and relying on one’s self to an alley in the streets of Detroit where the rickety, clone-like government public housing holds hundreds of families all trying to survive day to day. Gertie’s husband, Clovis, has taken a job working as a machinist in a factory making parts for the war effort. He believes this is a fantastic opportunity where Gertie sees nothing but what she doesn’t have now – the life she dreamed of on a place of their own that she had been saving for many years. She struggles to adjust to a city lifestyle of buying milk, veggies and meat and living extremely close to her neighbors. Most of her children find it much easier to learn new ways of talking and behaving that are more city-like.
This richly written novel has some heavy themes that speak to the era and the places that Ms. Arnow experienced. Themes of racial, religious, and labor tensions, prejudice, sacrifice and striving to achieve the American Dream are explored. Her astute storytelling mirrors the behaviors and language of immigrants who would have been living together in a community like this in Detroit. Ms. Arnow describes the miserable and utterly hopeless hell of the housing from first-hand experience. It is not one to read lightly but to ruminate on knowing that this was reality for real people. This is a chunkster at 600 pages, and I was completely enthralled by every storyline and character I met. My heart broke at some of the most heartrending tragic circumstances.
Gertie is one character I will not soon forget. She has a gritty determination and a talent for whittling (carving) out of wood little dolls and such. Her strong will and Bible knowledge get her through some of the most harrowing of life’s circumstances. Gertie is an overcomer despite the many sacrifices she provides for her husband and her children. She is remarkable and unforgettable.
From the beauty of the hills of Kentucky where Gertie’s family lived off of the land as stewards who only understood a lifestyle of growing, producing, and relying on one’s self to an alley in the streets of Detroit where the rickety, clone-like government public housing holds hundreds of families all trying to survive day to day. Gertie’s husband, Clovis, has taken a job working as a machinist in a factory making parts for the war effort. He believes this is a fantastic opportunity where Gertie sees nothing but what she doesn’t have now – the life she dreamed of on a place of their own that she had been saving for many years. She struggles to adjust to a city lifestyle of buying milk, veggies and meat and living extremely close to her neighbors. Most of her children find it much easier to learn new ways of talking and behaving that are more city-like.
This richly written novel has some heavy themes that speak to the era and the places that Ms. Arnow experienced. Themes of racial, religious, and labor tensions, prejudice, sacrifice and striving to achieve the American Dream are explored. Her astute storytelling mirrors the behaviors and language of immigrants who would have been living together in a community like this in Detroit. Ms. Arnow describes the miserable and utterly hopeless hell of the housing from first-hand experience. It is not one to read lightly but to ruminate on knowing that this was reality for real people. This is a chunkster at 600 pages, and I was completely enthralled by every storyline and character I met. My heart broke at some of the most heartrending tragic circumstances.
Gertie is one character I will not soon forget. She has a gritty determination and a talent for whittling (carving) out of wood little dolls and such. Her strong will and Bible knowledge get her through some of the most harrowing of life’s circumstances. Gertie is an overcomer despite the many sacrifices she provides for her husband and her children. She is remarkable and unforgettable.
April 27, 2007
I rated this a 5 because I read it at least 15 years ago & it still remains one of my favorite books. A TV movie was made in the 80's based on it (Jane Fonda starred) -- did not come close to doing the book justice.
An Appalachian woman, along with her husband and children, moves to Detroit where the family hopes to find a better life. The setting is just after WWII when industry was in full swing. Main character carves wooden dolls, thus the title. Book is about leaving "home", culture shock, relationships. Have recommended to book groups & always get positive feedback. Copyright 1960's.
An Appalachian woman, along with her husband and children, moves to Detroit where the family hopes to find a better life. The setting is just after WWII when industry was in full swing. Main character carves wooden dolls, thus the title. Book is about leaving "home", culture shock, relationships. Have recommended to book groups & always get positive feedback. Copyright 1960's.
March 20, 2020
This book is out of print, which is a tragedy, in my opinion. I first read it 25 or so years ago, when I was a young mother myself, and Gertie’s story touched my heart. I decided recently that it was time for a re-read, and it did not disappoint.
Gertie Nevals is a tenant farmer in Appalachia during WW2. She and her husband have 5 healthy children, and Gertie does most of the farming, while her husband Clovis hauls coal and “tinkers,” meaning that he is good with machinery and makes a few dollars here and there repairing cars and farm equipment for neighbors in their rural settlement in the mountains.
The story opens with a powerful scene in which Gertie must get emergency medical help for her youngest, Amos. Clovis is off with their truck doing some hauling, so Gertie rides their mule to the nearest highway, where her plan is to flag down a car to take her and Amos to the nearest town with a doctor. She manages to get to town, but not before having to perform emergency surgery on her own child. Thus, Gertie is established in the book’s first chapters as a woman who is competent for the life that she leads in her remote settlement. She can raise most of her family’s food. She can make it last the winter and cook it on a wood stove. She can chop wood. She can even diagnose illness and perform simple surgery in an emergency. A big, ugly woman, she is strong both physically and spiritually, and perfectly suited to her life in Kentucky.
But not so suited for the life she ends up with.
Rejected by the Draft Board, Clovis takes a job in a factory in Detroit, and Gertie’s mother convinces her that she and the children should follow him. In Detroit, Gertie is torn from the natural world that has always nourished her physically and spiritually. She is confronted with the need to purchase food rather than grow it, and with growing debt to pay for big-city necessities like a washing machine, nice school clothes and spending money for the children, and a car for Clovis. Her children adjust to city life with various degrees of success, some of them becoming people Gertie barely recognizes. It is soon apparent that life in Detroit is a trap that will be hard to escape.
What sustains Gertie in Detroit is her relationships with her neighbors, many of them transplanted “hillbillies” like herself. Poorly educated, deeply flawed and often feuding with each other, the residents of the housing project in the shadow of a steel mill nevertheless manage to form a little community. Gertie suffers one loss after another, and finally voluntarily surrenders something very precious to her in a heroic act of self-sacrifice. In this final, breathtaking act, the reader understands that Gertie has not lost what is often all that is left to us. She has not lost who she is: her agency, her compassion and her tiny spark of hope.
This is a deeply tragic novel, with just that tiniest ray of light at the end. It is also at the same time a deeply conservative and a radically liberal novel. It is conservative in the sense that it portrays the value of local community and simple, self-sufficient ways of living. Gertie and her family thrive in their traditional, self-sustaining rural community. They don’t need modern conveniences and, until war work beckons, are not lured away from the traditional values of family, faith and community, by the more shallow consumerist values of the city. Even in Detroit, it is community that sustains them. But, the book is also a howl against the social injustice of the mid-20th-century industrial system, before unionization and social welfare took hold. And the subtle Christian themes in the book are strongly of the “as you did unto the least of these so you did unto me” nature. So there’s plenty in this book for both the right and the left to love and hate.
Finally, and then I’ll shut up about this amazing book, it was interesting to get a portrayal of the discontents of that mid-20th-century era when we imagine, in our nostalgia, that everyone in America was united. Published in 1954, this book is closer in time to the darker aspects of that era. Rural communities suffered from the war’s vacuuming up of most of the male population, often including the only doctors for many miles around. Rural people, without mass transit, suffered especially from gas rationing, and from the government’s direction of resources to big factories and big coal mines at the expense of smaller enterprises in small towns and rural communities. During and immediately after the war, strikes and walkouts occurred regularly, often to protest dangerous working conditions. And, war workers were callously shed at the war’s end, with little in the way of benefits to cushion the job loss or even get them back home to where they came from. Every era has its discontents. Every era is the best of times and the worst of times.
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Gertie Nevals is a tenant farmer in Appalachia during WW2. She and her husband have 5 healthy children, and Gertie does most of the farming, while her husband Clovis hauls coal and “tinkers,” meaning that he is good with machinery and makes a few dollars here and there repairing cars and farm equipment for neighbors in their rural settlement in the mountains.
The story opens with a powerful scene in which Gertie must get emergency medical help for her youngest, Amos. Clovis is off with their truck doing some hauling, so Gertie rides their mule to the nearest highway, where her plan is to flag down a car to take her and Amos to the nearest town with a doctor. She manages to get to town, but not before having to perform emergency surgery on her own child. Thus, Gertie is established in the book’s first chapters as a woman who is competent for the life that she leads in her remote settlement. She can raise most of her family’s food. She can make it last the winter and cook it on a wood stove. She can chop wood. She can even diagnose illness and perform simple surgery in an emergency. A big, ugly woman, she is strong both physically and spiritually, and perfectly suited to her life in Kentucky.
But not so suited for the life she ends up with.
Rejected by the Draft Board, Clovis takes a job in a factory in Detroit, and Gertie’s mother convinces her that she and the children should follow him. In Detroit, Gertie is torn from the natural world that has always nourished her physically and spiritually. She is confronted with the need to purchase food rather than grow it, and with growing debt to pay for big-city necessities like a washing machine, nice school clothes and spending money for the children, and a car for Clovis. Her children adjust to city life with various degrees of success, some of them becoming people Gertie barely recognizes. It is soon apparent that life in Detroit is a trap that will be hard to escape.
What sustains Gertie in Detroit is her relationships with her neighbors, many of them transplanted “hillbillies” like herself. Poorly educated, deeply flawed and often feuding with each other, the residents of the housing project in the shadow of a steel mill nevertheless manage to form a little community. Gertie suffers one loss after another, and finally voluntarily surrenders something very precious to her in a heroic act of self-sacrifice. In this final, breathtaking act, the reader understands that Gertie has not lost what is often all that is left to us. She has not lost who she is: her agency, her compassion and her tiny spark of hope.
This is a deeply tragic novel, with just that tiniest ray of light at the end. It is also at the same time a deeply conservative and a radically liberal novel. It is conservative in the sense that it portrays the value of local community and simple, self-sufficient ways of living. Gertie and her family thrive in their traditional, self-sustaining rural community. They don’t need modern conveniences and, until war work beckons, are not lured away from the traditional values of family, faith and community, by the more shallow consumerist values of the city. Even in Detroit, it is community that sustains them. But, the book is also a howl against the social injustice of the mid-20th-century industrial system, before unionization and social welfare took hold. And the subtle Christian themes in the book are strongly of the “as you did unto the least of these so you did unto me” nature. So there’s plenty in this book for both the right and the left to love and hate.
Finally, and then I’ll shut up about this amazing book, it was interesting to get a portrayal of the discontents of that mid-20th-century era when we imagine, in our nostalgia, that everyone in America was united. Published in 1954, this book is closer in time to the darker aspects of that era. Rural communities suffered from the war’s vacuuming up of most of the male population, often including the only doctors for many miles around. Rural people, without mass transit, suffered especially from gas rationing, and from the government’s direction of resources to big factories and big coal mines at the expense of smaller enterprises in small towns and rural communities. During and immediately after the war, strikes and walkouts occurred regularly, often to protest dangerous working conditions. And, war workers were callously shed at the war’s end, with little in the way of benefits to cushion the job loss or even get them back home to where they came from. Every era has its discontents. Every era is the best of times and the worst of times.
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September 8, 2008
This book just made my "greatest novels of all time" list. Probably becuase it pretty much sums up my political ideologies in a simple and beautiful narrative. It was recommended to me by my grandmother-in-law and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone else. I dream to have a life just like the life Gertie Nevels dreamed of and only hope that my dreams won't also be squashed by the military-industrial complex that thrives off of unbridled capitalism and unchecked nationalism.
I found the theological discourse throughout the book to be of an uncommonly sofisticated nature, yet it could not be more unpretentious. It reaches well beyond the shallow religious debates we're used to being subjected to in modern media and print.
Finally, this book serves as a welcome reminder of where America once was and the "progress" we've been forced to adjust to. This is the story of America in the twentieth century.
I found the theological discourse throughout the book to be of an uncommonly sofisticated nature, yet it could not be more unpretentious. It reaches well beyond the shallow religious debates we're used to being subjected to in modern media and print.
Finally, this book serves as a welcome reminder of where America once was and the "progress" we've been forced to adjust to. This is the story of America in the twentieth century.
October 19, 2013
WOW!! Amazing describes The Doll Maker perfectly! I was shocked to find that less than 1500 members of GR have read this highly rated book, especially since it was written in the 1954. That simply should not be the case. I would think that by word of mouth alone through the decades this book would have been recommended to hundreds of thousands of readers and even required reading in school. It should have nabame recognition and loyal fans like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, if you ask me.
Set in rural KY during WWII, this is the story of a strong-willed and self-reliant woman who carries the full weight of life altering choices for the sake of her family despite her plans and dreams for a life for them. Gertie Nevels defines perseverance in the face of a hard life's trials and tribulations.
Gertie has secretly scriimped and saved for years to buy a piece of property for her family to farm and call their own for the rest of their lives. As her husbnd is preparing to go off to war, a partcular plot of land becomes availabe and she pursues this dream. Plans change forever.
Woven throughout this book is Gertie's one constant, her whittling of dolls and her whittling of a large piece of cherry wood into a replica of Judas or Jesus; she can't decide.
There are many other women and families whose paths cross Gertie's and her family and each of them have a story to tell of sacrifice, prejudice and dreams of a life beyond what they experience presently.
This breathtaking, gut wrenching, heartbreaking and inspiring family saga is a "must read" is you ask me. The ending left me speechless! I'll be savoring this book for years to come. I'll also be recommending it to all my fiction loving, especially Appalachian fiction loving, family and friends. Word abouyt this book has got to be spread!!
Side note to my review - Upon finishing the book, I wanted to watch the film based on the book; however it is not available on DVD. Why? That said, I cannot believe that Jane Fonda was cast as Gertie, along with a star studded cast. Once you read the book, you'll understand what I mean. I recall that Fonda did a great job with the role, but in my opinion, not a fit for the character as written by the author. I loathe when Hollywood "improves" on a character or a storyline b/c they think a "plain" character, as the author intended, won't sell tickets. I'm generally disappointed with film adaptations, so go figure on this one!
The Doll Maker is a reading experience I'll be savoring for many years to come. hope to be able to locate more of Arnow's work too.
Set in rural KY during WWII, this is the story of a strong-willed and self-reliant woman who carries the full weight of life altering choices for the sake of her family despite her plans and dreams for a life for them. Gertie Nevels defines perseverance in the face of a hard life's trials and tribulations.
Gertie has secretly scriimped and saved for years to buy a piece of property for her family to farm and call their own for the rest of their lives. As her husbnd is preparing to go off to war, a partcular plot of land becomes availabe and she pursues this dream. Plans change forever.
Woven throughout this book is Gertie's one constant, her whittling of dolls and her whittling of a large piece of cherry wood into a replica of Judas or Jesus; she can't decide.
There are many other women and families whose paths cross Gertie's and her family and each of them have a story to tell of sacrifice, prejudice and dreams of a life beyond what they experience presently.
This breathtaking, gut wrenching, heartbreaking and inspiring family saga is a "must read" is you ask me. The ending left me speechless! I'll be savoring this book for years to come. I'll also be recommending it to all my fiction loving, especially Appalachian fiction loving, family and friends. Word abouyt this book has got to be spread!!
Side note to my review - Upon finishing the book, I wanted to watch the film based on the book; however it is not available on DVD. Why? That said, I cannot believe that Jane Fonda was cast as Gertie, along with a star studded cast. Once you read the book, you'll understand what I mean. I recall that Fonda did a great job with the role, but in my opinion, not a fit for the character as written by the author. I loathe when Hollywood "improves" on a character or a storyline b/c they think a "plain" character, as the author intended, won't sell tickets. I'm generally disappointed with film adaptations, so go figure on this one!
The Doll Maker is a reading experience I'll be savoring for many years to come. hope to be able to locate more of Arnow's work too.
July 22, 2013
The Dollmaker: A Novel about Detroit--and Ordinary Courage--During World War II
It took me a couple of days after the announcement of Detroit's very close brush with complete bankruptcy to remember Harriette Arnow's novel about life in Motor City during the Second World War, The Dollmaker.
First published in 1954, the story centers on Gertie, a strong, capable woman who moves with her husband and children to Detroit so he can work in the war industry. As a gripping story of what it was like to move from Appalachia to a big, crowded city, the book has few peers. It opens with Gertie, whose hobby is whittling dolls, doing a tracheotomy on her little son who is choking with diptheria. From then on, the reader is hooked.
I first read the book after Joyce Carol Oates wrote about it in The New York Times in 1971. It had more or less been forgotten, even though it had been a big best seller when it was first published. Whe I read it, I found it engrossing. The image of the steel mill Arnow paints has stayed with me ever since.
Oates's essay apparently is now an afterword for an edition that is still in print: a paperback edition was published in 2009. To judge from the number of teacher's guides on-line, the novel must also appear on reading lists for a number of high school and junior college English classes.
That should not scare you away, though. Read it to get a feel for what it was like to work in the factories of Detroit in the city's heyday, to understand what ordinary folk were up against, and to appreciate the strength of the women who had to stand by their menfolk.
April 22, 2013
The Dollmaker opens with intense action that proves to be foreshadowing . A mother is taking her young son to a doctor; they are riding on a mule, the only transportation available in this emergency. Using the mule in desperation as a road block, she stops a speeding car on a back country road. As the son is suffocating due to a congested throat, she takes out her knife and with the unwilling help of the men in the car cuts a breathing hole in his neck. The boy does survive thanks to the determination and skill of his mother.
After this startling beginning the book settles into the story of a subsistence farming mountain family. The father earns some hard cash by hauling small amounts of coal for people to use in their heating stoves in his ancient truck. It is the beginning of the U.S. participation in the Second World War. All the able-bodied men are being taken into the army or going north to work in the high paying factories producing war goods.
The story takes you into the life of one extended family as they struggle to live off the land, the only way they know to live.
I cannot tell you how many times I have started to read this book. I was assigned to read it in a 1967 college social work class and I am giving myself one more chance. I think the fact that the book has over 600 pages has something to do with my failure to date. But now I have actually read a few pretty long books so maybe I can manage this one. And this is actually the “short” book of the several I am reading right now.
I am on a Detroit-setting jag at the moment. I hadn’t remembered that the setting here was the motor city during WWII when the auto industry converted to a war industry making everything from the Jeep to the huge bombers.
The Nevels family of five children moves from the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky to join the father Clovis who has gotten a job in a Detroit war factory. The mother, Gertie, gives up her hopes of buying farm property to improve their lives. She feels she must do this since it is the duty of the wife to follow her husband. It is the early 1940s and they move into a crowded, dirty slum project in Detroit built for the factory workers. Gertie hates it, unable to adjust after life in the country living on the land. She takes her ways and family into the city and struggles to make it work.
She begins to see the pressures of their new home on the children. Talking with the school principal:
And then later with one of the teachers:
Some in Detroit called Gertie and her family hillbillies. They didn’t mean it kindly. She was big and not pretty.
She tries to withstand the pressure to change her ways. Sometimes she resists and sometimes she tries to fit into her new life. She always believes they will return to Kentucky when the war ends and the factory jobs end.
She experiences a litany of events that try her body and soul. Her whittling is one of her few escapes from her unhappy daily life. Among the things she skillfully whittles are small wooden dolls, the source of the title of the book.
The mountain accents are very well done and the settings of a vivid Kentucky and then a bleak Detroit are made appropriate and believable. Much of the writing mirrors the contrasting settings with living and dying palpably created. There are no words to make you want to be in the Detroit projects. Like Gertie, you are drawn back to the mountains.
Then, the war ends, and they don’t return to Kentucky. This requires more adjusting and acceptance.
Why hadn’t I realized what was missing from this book set in the Detroit war time factories? There had been some references to labor unions but just as I thought the book was winding down and I was going to find out if our Nevels family was going to pack up and go back to Kentucky, a significant union aspect to the story develops. There is a strike after the war and the Nevels family is in the midst of it. The story ramps up again and portrays unions that stand between exploited workers and their bosses as well as participating in labor violence during a turbulent time.
Our transplanted family faces crises, one after another, as well as conflicts with their neighbors. As Joyce Carol Oates writes in the Afterword, “It is part of the industrial society that people of widely varying backgrounds should be thrown together, like animals competing for a small, fixed amount of food, forced to hate one another.”
Gertie, with her hand carving of wooden dolls and other small objects, is a highly skilled self-taught craftswoman. But with pressure from Clovis to earn money, she begins to use a pattern and a jig saw to mass produce the dolls, just like the factories that have dominated the devolving lives of her family members.
Four stars for good writing and a compelling story. In my opinion, it could have been somewhat shorter and accomplished the same results. But the action came in waves creating a lot of intensity that kept me reading. The action at the onset of the story pulled me in immediately. The story of a strong woman who is unable to go against her husband is a constant part of the book. It is something to ponder.
After this startling beginning the book settles into the story of a subsistence farming mountain family. The father earns some hard cash by hauling small amounts of coal for people to use in their heating stoves in his ancient truck. It is the beginning of the U.S. participation in the Second World War. All the able-bodied men are being taken into the army or going north to work in the high paying factories producing war goods.
The story takes you into the life of one extended family as they struggle to live off the land, the only way they know to live.
I cannot tell you how many times I have started to read this book. I was assigned to read it in a 1967 college social work class and I am giving myself one more chance. I think the fact that the book has over 600 pages has something to do with my failure to date. But now I have actually read a few pretty long books so maybe I can manage this one. And this is actually the “short” book of the several I am reading right now.
I am on a Detroit-setting jag at the moment. I hadn’t remembered that the setting here was the motor city during WWII when the auto industry converted to a war industry making everything from the Jeep to the huge bombers.
In the United States the preparation for industrial mobilization was negligible until 1940; in fact, there was no serious effort even to restrict civilian automobile production until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Still, the American automotive industry represented such a concentration of productive capacity and skill that, once its resources had been harnessed to war production, its contribution was tremendous. Between 1940 and 1945 automotive firms made almost $29 billion worth of military materials, a fifth of the country’s entire output. The list included 2,600,000 military trucks and 660,000 jeeps, but production extended well beyond motor vehicles. Automotive firms provided one-half of the machine guns and carbines made in the United States during the war, 60 percent of the tanks, all the armoured cars, and 85 percent of the military helmets and aerial bombs.
It had been assumed that automotive facilities could be readily converted for aircraft production, but this proved more difficult than anticipated. Automobile assembly plants did not readily accommodate airframes, nor could an automobile engine factory be converted without substantial modification. These problems were eventually resolved, and automobile companies contributed significantly to aircraft production.
Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
The Nevels family of five children moves from the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky to join the father Clovis who has gotten a job in a Detroit war factory. The mother, Gertie, gives up her hopes of buying farm property to improve their lives. She feels she must do this since it is the duty of the wife to follow her husband. It is the early 1940s and they move into a crowded, dirty slum project in Detroit built for the factory workers. Gertie hates it, unable to adjust after life in the country living on the land. She takes her ways and family into the city and struggles to make it work.
She begins to see the pressures of their new home on the children. Talking with the school principal:
“Are you sure you won’t mind leaving it? I guess it’s an heirloom,” the man said.
Gertie smiled. “I’ve left four youngens here. I oughtn’t to mind leaven an old split-basket.”
“They’ll be all right,” the man said. “They will” – now he didn’t seem himself at all, but was like Mrs. Vashinski – “adjust. This school has many children from many places, but in the end they all – most – adjust, and so will yours. They’re young.”
“Adjust?” One empty hand pulled a finger of the other empty hand.
“Yes, adjust, learn to get along, like it – be like the others – learn to want to be like the others.”
“Oh,” she pondered, looking down the hall – ugly gray – and at the children laughing in the doorway, then turned to him with a slow headshake. ”I want em to be happy – but I don’t know I want em to – to – “
“Adjust?”
“Leastways not too good.”
And then later with one of the teachers:
Mrs. Whittle bit her freshly lipsticked lips. “The trouble is,” she went on, “you don’t want to adjust – and Rueben doesn’t either.”
“That’s part way right,” Gertie said, moving past her to the stairs. “But he can’t hep the way he’s made. It’s a lot more trouble to roll out steel – an make it like you want it – than it is biscuit dough.”
Some in Detroit called Gertie and her family hillbillies. They didn’t mean it kindly. She was big and not pretty.
In glancing at the basket, she saw a huge and ugly woman, flat-cheeked, straight-lipped, straggly-headed, her face grayed with tiredness and coal dust, even her chapped lips gray. The straight, almost bushy black brows below the bony forehead were on a level with her own, and she realized she was looking at herself – the same old Gertie who had made her mother weep.
She tries to withstand the pressure to change her ways. Sometimes she resists and sometimes she tries to fit into her new life. She always believes they will return to Kentucky when the war ends and the factory jobs end.
She experiences a litany of events that try her body and soul. Her whittling is one of her few escapes from her unhappy daily life. Among the things she skillfully whittles are small wooden dolls, the source of the title of the book.
The mountain accents are very well done and the settings of a vivid Kentucky and then a bleak Detroit are made appropriate and believable. Much of the writing mirrors the contrasting settings with living and dying palpably created. There are no words to make you want to be in the Detroit projects. Like Gertie, you are drawn back to the mountains.
Then, the war ends, and they don’t return to Kentucky. This requires more adjusting and acceptance.
Gertie could hear no rejoicing, no lifting of the heart that all the planned killing and wounding of the men were finished. Rather it was as if the people had lived on blood, and now that the bleeding was ended, they were worried about their future food.
Why hadn’t I realized what was missing from this book set in the Detroit war time factories? There had been some references to labor unions but just as I thought the book was winding down and I was going to find out if our Nevels family was going to pack up and go back to Kentucky, a significant union aspect to the story develops. There is a strike after the war and the Nevels family is in the midst of it. The story ramps up again and portrays unions that stand between exploited workers and their bosses as well as participating in labor violence during a turbulent time.
Our transplanted family faces crises, one after another, as well as conflicts with their neighbors. As Joyce Carol Oates writes in the Afterword, “It is part of the industrial society that people of widely varying backgrounds should be thrown together, like animals competing for a small, fixed amount of food, forced to hate one another.”
Gertie, with her hand carving of wooden dolls and other small objects, is a highly skilled self-taught craftswoman. But with pressure from Clovis to earn money, she begins to use a pattern and a jig saw to mass produce the dolls, just like the factories that have dominated the devolving lives of her family members.
Four stars for good writing and a compelling story. In my opinion, it could have been somewhat shorter and accomplished the same results. But the action came in waves creating a lot of intensity that kept me reading. The action at the onset of the story pulled me in immediately. The story of a strong woman who is unable to go against her husband is a constant part of the book. It is something to ponder.
July 26, 2024
came in the mail yesterday. it is really a good book to read. a must read for everyone
September 8, 2024
I read for pleasure, and when I start to dread picking up a book and prioritize other leisure activities, it is time to put the book aside. I got to page 362, more than halfway through The Dollmaker, and I just cannot motivate myself to read on. I will say this — all of the action that has taken place in this novel could easily have taken place in 200 pages. Further, the author could have written the dialogue using syntax and few key words here and there, without making every conversation a struggle to understand. I’m through and moving on.
DNF - one star.
DNF - one star.
June 1, 2018
It's towards the end of WWII and strong self reliant Gertie Nevels has finally scrimped and saved up enough over 15 years to help buy her family their own farm in the peaceful Kentucky hills, freeing them from sharecropping and allowing them at last to have something to call their own. When the army passes up the service of her man Clovis and instead sends him to factory work in Detroit, Gertie is full ready to stay and run the family farm until the war ends, but her meddling mother convinces her that she and the children belong with " their man" and so its to wartime Detroit they go. To the factory workers slums where families share walls and live in mass unendurable poverty. Still one must find a way to go on and Gertie begins a tough battle to hold onto those things she finds most dear.
This book , dubbed a masterpiece.. a superb book of strength and glowing richness by NYTBR, was first written in 1954 and has a place on the best loved bookshelves of many. I read it after becoming acquainted with Harriet Arnow when one of my Bookclubs read Hunters's Horn one of her previous novels. Arnow was inspired by her rich history of five generations of Kentucky storytellers. The Dollmaker is a story of courage and strength that will stick with you a long time. 5 stars
This book , dubbed a masterpiece.. a superb book of strength and glowing richness by NYTBR, was first written in 1954 and has a place on the best loved bookshelves of many. I read it after becoming acquainted with Harriet Arnow when one of my Bookclubs read Hunters's Horn one of her previous novels. Arnow was inspired by her rich history of five generations of Kentucky storytellers. The Dollmaker is a story of courage and strength that will stick with you a long time. 5 stars
September 9, 2014
The unforgettable and tragic story of an Appalachian family lured to Detroit by the promise of high wages. Living in the heart of the industrialized north during WW II, Gertie, the strong and good wife and mother, shows determination and grace as she struggles to adjust while her dreams of self-sufficiency and personal freedoms shrink and perish. Her family is forced into dependence on the machine of industrialized society which relentlessly destroys their independence and dignity.
It's a classic of American 'regional' literature.
(The Dollmaker was a runner-up for the 1955 National Book Award (won by Faulkner with The Fable).)
It's a classic of American 'regional' literature.
(The Dollmaker was a runner-up for the 1955 National Book Award (won by Faulkner with The Fable).)
July 4, 2008
First published in 1954, this Dreiseresque novel chronicles the movement of a family from from rural Kentucky to Detroit during World War II. The husband (Clotis Nevels) works in a factory; his wife Gertie takes in laundry and occasionally sells hand-whittled crucifixes and dolls; the children amuse themselves in the backyards and alleys. Not surprisingly, the move from farm to factory slowly kills both people and spirits. Although there are occasional positive social interactions in the family's little community of government-supported housing, the dominant themes are friction, prejudice, deprivation, and loss. The novel opens with a gripping and memorable chapter, but frequently bogs down over 600 pages of stark and minute social realism before finally reaching a symbolically appropriate conclusion. Readers with a Dickensian mindset will be ready to tackle this work, but life is short and and there's lots of literature out there. (For those who prefer name-brand critics, Joyce Carol Oates's afterword is full of praise for this book.)
July 11, 2011
I believe Joyce Carol Oates recommended this book either in the forward or in a review. In any event, I never would have discovered it otherwise. The author introduces the reader to the world of rural Kentucky during a time of deep poverty and despair. It's a tough read as some awful stuff happens but, at the same time, it's a book you won't be able to put down. There was one moment when I was literally sobbing so hard that I had to stop reading. It's fiction, but the book paints a true portrait of life for families who had to struggle just to put food on the table. A remarkable book and beautifully written.
May 20, 2025
I've always said that I couldn't have too many books, only too few bookshelves. That is no longer true, as my home is now much smaller, and I finally have to admit that I have too many books, no matter how many bookshelves I may acquire. So I have, for the most part, stopped buying books and have even made a couple feeble attempts to purge the ones I already have.
The Dollmaker, however, is a book that I could not return to the library without first purchasing a copy of my own. The hours I spent with Gertie Nevels and her family and friends were precious hours, and I am not willing to forgo the pleasure that comes from passing by a well-loved book on my shelf and smiling at it as at a good friend. Now that I have my own copy, I will transfer the dozens of sticky notes from the library book to my own, and send The Dollmaker back to the public library where I hope another person will be drawn to it, take it from the shelf, and make the arduous journey from fertile, WWII-era rural Kentucky to the harsh and meager streets of industrial Detroit.
I relate to Gertie in many ways, and I felt her joy and sorrow. I wanted to protect her, even though I wasn't able to protect myself or the people I love. But life did what life does, and our choices can be shackles until they become hindsight and bring a sometimes too-late wisdom.
I loved this book, in case that still needs to be said. I also suffered with it, was angry with it, thought about it, talked about it, and generally obsessed about it. Through the course of these 608 pages, I loved, despised, hoped, hated, raged, yearned, argued, cheered, and grieved. I will enjoy seeing this book on my shelf, and I will one day read it again, but not yet; for now the wounds are too fresh. For now it is too soon.
May 20, 2025: I was driving down South Oneida Street in Green Bay and saw a large stack of scrap wood on the curb in front of someone's house, and what flashed through my mind was that I'd like to tell Gertie and Enoch about that wood.
That's what kind of book this is.
The Dollmaker, however, is a book that I could not return to the library without first purchasing a copy of my own. The hours I spent with Gertie Nevels and her family and friends were precious hours, and I am not willing to forgo the pleasure that comes from passing by a well-loved book on my shelf and smiling at it as at a good friend. Now that I have my own copy, I will transfer the dozens of sticky notes from the library book to my own, and send The Dollmaker back to the public library where I hope another person will be drawn to it, take it from the shelf, and make the arduous journey from fertile, WWII-era rural Kentucky to the harsh and meager streets of industrial Detroit.
I relate to Gertie in many ways, and I felt her joy and sorrow. I wanted to protect her, even though I wasn't able to protect myself or the people I love. But life did what life does, and our choices can be shackles until they become hindsight and bring a sometimes too-late wisdom.
I loved this book, in case that still needs to be said. I also suffered with it, was angry with it, thought about it, talked about it, and generally obsessed about it. Through the course of these 608 pages, I loved, despised, hoped, hated, raged, yearned, argued, cheered, and grieved. I will enjoy seeing this book on my shelf, and I will one day read it again, but not yet; for now the wounds are too fresh. For now it is too soon.
May 20, 2025: I was driving down South Oneida Street in Green Bay and saw a large stack of scrap wood on the curb in front of someone's house, and what flashed through my mind was that I'd like to tell Gertie and Enoch about that wood.
That's what kind of book this is.
January 25, 2013
“Gertie for the first time really looked at the rows of little shed-like buildings, their low roofs covered with snow, the walls of some strange grey-green stuff that seemed neither brick, wood, nor stone. She had glimpsed them briefly when they turned into the side road, but had never thought of them as homes. She had hardly thought of them at all, they were so little and so still against the quivering crimson light, under the roaring airplane, so low after the giant smokestacks.”
It is the early 1940,’s. Back home in Kentucky, Gertie’s husband Clovis has lost his job hauling coal because all the coal-miners have been drafted to serve in the war. Men like Clovis, who have been turned away at the enlistment office, feel the tug to go to Detroit, where the lure of big dollars for factory work drives them from their homes. Once settled, he sends for his wife and children, but Detroit, and their hopes, become tarnished and dirty as reality sets in.
This novel was originally published in 1954, and yet, it could certainly be a best-seller if published today. The themes are still relevant and Gertie’s struggles come alive once immersed in this beautiful, highly readable, tragic book.
There is such a sense a place here. We see clearly the Kentucky countryside, barely life-giving, but yet stunning and loving in a way that families sometimes are. It is home to Gertie, it is what she knows and it is what can sustain her. And in contrast, the cramped, grey, dirty Detroit. It is cold and suffocating and Gertie must not only make it her home, she must make familiar that which is so alien to her.
There is no happy ending in this book. It is about real life. Sometimes things go the way we wish, and sometimes not. Sometimes you must just endure. I live in North Dakota, where a huge oil boom is happening in the western part of the state. Due to the national economic downturn, thousands of men show up there, looking for work, pinning their hopes on the good paying jobs that can be found there. But reality soon sets in. Like Gertie, they find that the work is hard and the hours are long. The pay, which would be great back home, barely seems to make ends meet as high demand pushes prices upward. And while the need for workers is great, the towns in the west cannot provide the infrastructure and housing fast enough. Cheap, modular units, built to house the workers, are the equivalent of Gertie’s cramped shed-like houses. They come there to work, but all the while, they dream of going back home.
The Dollmaker is a timeless achievement, with unforgettable characters and a rich in the strength of human adversity. Highly recommend. 4 1/2 stars.
It is the early 1940,’s. Back home in Kentucky, Gertie’s husband Clovis has lost his job hauling coal because all the coal-miners have been drafted to serve in the war. Men like Clovis, who have been turned away at the enlistment office, feel the tug to go to Detroit, where the lure of big dollars for factory work drives them from their homes. Once settled, he sends for his wife and children, but Detroit, and their hopes, become tarnished and dirty as reality sets in.
This novel was originally published in 1954, and yet, it could certainly be a best-seller if published today. The themes are still relevant and Gertie’s struggles come alive once immersed in this beautiful, highly readable, tragic book.
There is such a sense a place here. We see clearly the Kentucky countryside, barely life-giving, but yet stunning and loving in a way that families sometimes are. It is home to Gertie, it is what she knows and it is what can sustain her. And in contrast, the cramped, grey, dirty Detroit. It is cold and suffocating and Gertie must not only make it her home, she must make familiar that which is so alien to her.
There is no happy ending in this book. It is about real life. Sometimes things go the way we wish, and sometimes not. Sometimes you must just endure. I live in North Dakota, where a huge oil boom is happening in the western part of the state. Due to the national economic downturn, thousands of men show up there, looking for work, pinning their hopes on the good paying jobs that can be found there. But reality soon sets in. Like Gertie, they find that the work is hard and the hours are long. The pay, which would be great back home, barely seems to make ends meet as high demand pushes prices upward. And while the need for workers is great, the towns in the west cannot provide the infrastructure and housing fast enough. Cheap, modular units, built to house the workers, are the equivalent of Gertie’s cramped shed-like houses. They come there to work, but all the while, they dream of going back home.
The Dollmaker is a timeless achievement, with unforgettable characters and a rich in the strength of human adversity. Highly recommend. 4 1/2 stars.
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