SOLVED. American colonialism (?), i think children's book (?) man starts farm, really excels at it, marries a woman only because she can bear his child, everything is all about the multiplying - more livestock, more people, then drought? [s]

[Gorana]

Basically I read this a really long time ago, there's this man who I THINK comes to america and starts a farm???
And there's this... old, altar-like sacrificial stone that keeps getting mentioned, first i think he finds it alone, then he comes to it with his wife (whom i only think he loved when she was pregnant or something??) and she tries to climb on it and slips and breaks her neck & dies (obviously), iirc a slave woman raises their son
and basically it goes on and on and a huge drought rolls in, it dOESNT RELENT, so the workers on the farm finally organize to take the animals somewhere else, and while theyre at it the man goes back to that stone with a calf and butchers it on it, but its not enough, so he ends up giving himself as the sacrifice and there was definitely a parallel between his blood soaking up the moss and the heavy clouds rolling in as the sign of a storm to come and i ???????
for all my terrible descriptions, i would REALLY love to find what this book is again, i took it from the library in the school my mother worked in well over 5 years ago, it was a pretty old book but it left a really big impact on me?? i remember how absurd it felt, how absent and cold the main character seemed at all times, just kind of floating along, doing his thing

[Ayshe]

It's been a while since I read it, but looking at the wikipedia article To a God Unknown seems to fit?

[Gorana]

Ayshe wrote: "It's been a while since I read it, but looking at the wikipedia article To a God Unknown seems to fit?"

God, thank you, that's it, that's it! I forgot about 90% of the plot & had to google to find the translated title because I read it in Serbian originally but that's absolutely it! [commence screaming]

[Ayshe]

Great! There was period in my life when I was crazy about Steinbeck. My first email address was steinbeck_something, the person who helped setting it up tried to explain that it should be named in a way that says something about me, but I didn't understand :)