From the Bookshelf of Topeka & Shawnee Co. Public Library…

Winter Wheat

Mildred Walker,

James Welch (Introduction)

Start date: March 12, 2012

Finish date: April 9, 2012

Discussion: Literature with Lunch

Why we're reading this: Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker

This 1944 National Book Award nominee tells the story of eighteen year old …more
[close] Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker

This 1944 National Book Award nominee tells the story of eighteen year old Ellen Webb, the daughter of dry-land wheat farmers in Montana, as she goes off to college, falls in love, and begins to see everything with new and critical eyes. A brief presentation on the cultural impact of this classic is followed by discussion. Read and discuss the book, or attend and listen to learn more about a classic novel.

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Apr 18, 2012 Lissa rated it it was amazing

“September is like a quiet day after a whole week of wind,”
The opening line of Mildred Walker’s most popular novel, Winter Wheat, sets the tone for the metaphors of the farming and natural worlds that bring this book to life.

After selling the dry land wheat crop in the early 1940’s at a decent price, Ellen Webb’s parents can afford to send her away for her first year of college. She goes back east to school– Minnesota is east of Montana anyway, and falls in love with Gil, a wealthy and cultured
“September is like a quiet day after a whole week of wind,”
The opening line of Mildred Walker’s most popular novel, Winter Wheat, sets the tone for the metaphors of the farming and natural worlds that bring this book to life.

After selling the dry land wheat crop in the early 1940’s at a decent price, Ellen Webb’s parents can afford to send her away for her first year of college. She goes back east to school– Minnesota is east of Montana anyway, and falls in love with Gil, a wealthy and cultured senior. Ellen returns to the farm and is quickly back to helping with farm work, although she views everything differently now that she is in love. After much anticipation, Gil comes to visit, and then leaves again. When a storm brings hail, the wheat doesn’t bring enough money for Ellen to return to school, and she takes a solitary position living and teaching in a remote one-room school house. Ellen’s parents, a World War I veteran with shrapnel injuries and the Russian bride who has been nursing him since he was injured on Armistice Day, have a complicated relationship that Ellen has always misjudged. Unsure of where she fits in the world, Ellen struggles to understand her parents and herself, and to make sense of the past and her future. James Welch, as the editor of this reissued edition of Winter Wheat notes, “It is a story about growing up, becoming a woman, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, within the space of a year and a half. But what a year and a half it is!”

Mildred Walker, daughter of a teacher and a Baptist minister, wrote since her early teens. She married a surgeon-physician and achieved her Master’s degree while her husband practiced medicine in Michigan. When the family moved to Great Falls, Montana, Mildred Walker hired household help so she could pursue her writing career. She observed the lives of the people her husband treated, and absorbed the natural setting of Montana.

She wrote about her personal philosophy: “I feel strongly about the need to oppose materialism in both our national and individual life--the importance of the freedom of every individual, but the need for a better understanding of the nature of freedom--the need to dethrone success as the American ideal and substitute for it a creative quality in our daily living.”

As a college assignment in Winter Wheat, Ellen struggles to reflect on her life and write autobiographical essays in some of the most revealing and well written scenes I’ve ever read. In our book discussion, talk centered on the reality of hard manual labor, the changes that equipment like the combine have brought to farming, and the experience of life in tune with crops and weather and the natural world. We also speculated on what Ellen would do next – the book’s ended is satisfying, but somewhat open ended.
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Mar 09, 2012 Carol rated it really liked it

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It's hard to describe though. It's one season of a young woman's life in the early 40's based in Montana. Mildred Walker really paints a vivid picture of farm life in Montana - it's beauty and it's bitterness - and wraps in some history, love, and family interactions as well. There were times I got tired of the seemingly endless wind blowing and butte descriptions, but the story held me the whole way through. And the conclusion made the book feel complete - i ...more

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Sep 22, 2014 Miranda marked it as to-read

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