The Trees by Conrad Richter

[Connie]

I enjoy the colloquialisms, but like footnotes or a glossary for words we might not recognize. Usually Conrad Richter uses the unusual words in a way that we can figure out the meaning.

[Sam]

I am mixed on this. I think it can enhance the the book but often either is wrong, feels wrong, or just doesn't tell the full story. Plus you have the Gone With the Wind situation where the attempt at colloquializing winds up offensive. I think I prefer the author to stay away from it all together unless the author is writing a historical novel about a period the author personally experienced.

[Pharmacdon]

From forward:

Included among these latter are the neighbors of pioneer stock the young author once knew in the hills of Pennsylvania and later in the Ohio Valley, in whose mode of thought and speech much of this story is told, approximating as it does the store of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century speech collected from old manuscripts, letters, and records, a speech quite different from the formal written and printed language of the time into which the talk of citizens, the testimony of court witnesses, and even the conversation of ladies and gentlemen in the privacy of their family circles had almost invariably to be translated before reaching the respectability of public print. This early, vigorous spoken language, contrary to public belief, had its considerable origin in the Northeastern states, whence it was carried by emigrants into pioneer Ohio and adjoining territories, where today it has largely disappeared, and, along with the Pennsylvania rifle, into the South and Southwest, where it has more widely survived and is sometimes thought to be a purely native form of speech but which, wherever found, should be recognized with its local variants as a living reminder of the great mother tongue of early America..

I, too, wish there were a glossary or footnotes.

[Terry]

For me, it did not add to my enjoyment of the book — unlike, say, the vernacular turns of phrases in Cataloochee, for example, which I quite enjoyed. It seemed to disrupt the narrative flow of The Trees in my case.

[Terry]

Attention BUDDY READERS who have been reading mostly western and historical US fiction with our Group: We are discussing books and schedules for next year. We would like to hear from you before turning over to Sara for general posting. (Sara, please also comment!)

The list below is up for discussion, books and timing. The books listed by month have support by at least two members -- shown after the author. Please posts support and comments on schedule! This list is not final. I have made a few edits since last posting, with books which have the most support on top.

2023 Preliminary Schedule
January: The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark -- Connie, Sara, Katy, Lori, Sue, Terry

February: The Son by Philipp Meyer -- Sue, Sam?, Terry

March: I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven -- Lori, Sue, Terry

April: Warlock by Oakley Hall -- Sue, Sam?, Terry

May: Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb -- Sue, Lori, Terry

June: Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson -- Lori, Sue, Terry

July: Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner -- Sue, Terry

Here are more ideas to discuss or to gain support:
True Grit by Charles Portis -- Terry, Sam?
Giant by Edna Ferber -- Sue
The Searchers by Alan Le May -- Sam?
Shane by Jack Schaefer -- Sam?
The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister -- Sam?
The Secret River by Kate Greenville -- ?
To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck -- Terry
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson -- Terry
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis - Terry
A Larry McMurtry novel other than Lonesome Dove - Terry
A James Fenimore Cooper novel - Sam

If I have left something out, please add to the list! I put in Sam with a question mark because -- well, read his posts -- I think he supports them! I put ideas at the bottom of the list which seem like they fit nicely into our Catching Up with the Classics group. They are only ideas; add your own!

Finally, how long should we leave this discussion open?

[Antoinette]

Definitely interested in Big rock Candy Mountain. Will review others. Thanks.

[Connie]

This is a great choice of books, Terry. You can add me to the list for these books, although I might read more of them if I have the time:

The Ox-Bow Incident
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Warlock
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
True Grit
To a God Unknown

[Sara, Old School Classics]

I'm sorry, Terry, but I cannot plan this far ahead with still six months left in the current year. So, I will only commit to Ox-Bow at this time. When you guys have a concrete schedule, send it to me or post it here and I will try to monitor it as I have our previous reads and add them to the schedule as they come up. I do not want to put anything this far out on the group schedule. I added the others we read a month or so before the read, even though we had projected several months ahead of that.

[Antoinette]

Definitely include me in The Ox Bow Incident as well. I’ll mark it for January.

[Janelle]

I’m interested in the The Son, I enjoyed the Tv show a few years ago.

I see The Secret River by Kate Grenville on the list. That’s Australian, set in colonial Sydney.

[Terry]

Sara, I understand. I view this exercise more as expression of potential interest rather than a commitment at this point. And yes, I don’t think we need to open it up and post these super far into the future. It’s just that people were starting to talk about books and I didn’t want them to get lost as we move on from reading The Trees. With plenty of time to think about what we might want to read, I was hoping to get lots of input so we know what might garner a large group of buddies.

[Terry]

Janelle, thanks. I included it because someone in our group thought it was very similar to the books we’ve been reading — even though Australian.

[Pharmacdon]

Mighty fine readin'. I mought read Fields.

[Terry]

I am having issues posting from computer so I am back on the app. Unfortunately I cannot do as many functions from that, so I need to retype the list.

3023 Schedule UPDATE 7/20
January: The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark — Connie, Sara, Katy, Lori, Sue, Terry, Antoinette

February: The Son by Philipp Meyer — Sue, Sam?, Terry, Janelle

March: I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Msrgaret Craven — Lori, Sue, Terry, Connie

April: Warlock by Oakley Hall — Sue, Sam?, Terry, Connie

May: Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb — Sue, Lori, Terry

june: Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson — Lori, Sue, Terry

July: Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner — Sue, Terry, Antoinette, Connie

Thos sll I have tentatively scheduled. I will post another for books under discussion.

[Terry]

More Books Under Discussion: For 2023, unscheduled

True Grit by Charles Portis — Terry, Sam?, Connie
To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck — Terry, Connie
Giant by Edna Ferber — Sue
The Searchers by Alan Le May — Sam?
Shane by Jack Schaefer — Sam?
The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister —Sam?
The Secret River by Kate Greenville (Australian) — ?
Winesberg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson — Terry
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis — Terry
A Larry McMurtry novel other than Lonesome Dove — Terry
A James Fenimore Cooper novel — Sam?

[Sue]

Thanks for compiling the list Terry! Lots of great books here. I think we should try nominating these books for group reads too when they fit the parameters.

[Shirley (stampartiste)]

I'm a little late to the game, and I'm only so far as Chapter 16. Public Day. But I wanted to jump in and say how much I'm enjoying this story. I, too, have been wondering the setting for the story (place and time), so thank you to all you sleuths who have come up with the solution. Like Brian, I have also read David McCullough's The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West. I didn't find it as enthralling as some of McCullough's other books, so I'm afraid I didn't retain much of the history he related.

This pioneering experience was so different from the experience of those on the Oregon Trail. I can't imagine being a wife with small children pushing further and further into a dense forest... so dense you could not see the sky or sunshine. How claustrophobic that must have felt! And living for months without a proper shelter, exposed to the elements and wild animals, far away from any civilization, and a husband who went off hunting for days on end... what an oppressive existence. It's no wonder Jary lost the will to live! If only she could have lived long enough to see more and more people homesteading nearby.

As many of you have mentioned, Richter's use of language is perfect for this story. I don't understand some of the vernacular, but that just makes the story more authentic.

I hope there is a happy ending to (view spoiler)[Sulie's disappearance (hide spoiler)]. Unfortunately, my mind imagines the worst.

[Sara, Old School Classics]

You are so right, Shirley, that this was a different experience than the move West along the Oregon trail. I think there would have been a different feeling having other families traveling along with you. When you got to the terminus, you would almost have a community already built. The isolation would be a difficult part of this phase of the settlement of the country, but it had its appeal for a certain kind of man. I have always thought it more in line with the Dick Summers type, who didn't have or want family, but in truth it was Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone who mostly stood out, and both of them were family men.

[Pharmacdon]

Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "I'm a little late to the game, and I'm only so far as Chapter 16. Public Day. But I wanted to jump in and say how much I'm enjoying this story. I, too, have been wondering the setting for the story..."

You have to read the other books (The Fields and The Town) to find out what happens. Richter has been good to us and resolved family issues, even if it is one sentence tossed in the story.

[Shirley (stampartiste)]

I just finished The Trees, and I loved it. Richter presented another side of the Westward Migration that I had never really delved into. Unlike the pioneers who mostly traveled in groups on the Oregon Trail, these early pioneers did not have the benefit of community. In many ways, even though they were geographically closer to home, emotionally this had to be much harder on the women that went with their husbands into this new raw land - especially for women, like Jary, who were used to the creature comforts of a developed settlement.

As to the characters, I really did not like Worth Luckett who dragged his family into the deep, uninhabited woods of the Northwest Territory, abandoned them for days on end to do exactly what (besides hunting for game), and then abandoned his motherless children to go live in the lively French Settlements (New Orleans?) on the Mississippi River rather than face the much harder role of being a responsible father. He get no sympathy from me.

I felt sorry for Jary and couldn’t understand what she saw in Worth, but then when Genny repeated her mother’s mistake by marrying Louie Scurrah, a man just like her father, I realized that both mother and daughter were more romantics than realists. Their young hearts would lead them to unhappy marriages.

Sayward was wisdom personified. I loved how she confronted life and dealt with whatever came along. I love how she understood people and worked with their personalities rather than try to force her will on them.

Achsa had her father’s and Louie Scurrah’s personalities. Sayward understood early on that Achsa would have been more suited to be Louie’s wife than Genny. In the upcoming books of the Awakening Land trilogy, I’ll be interested to see if Achsa is not actually the dominant partner in that relationship. She definitely won’t take what Louie doled out to Genny!

A couple of ideas came to mind as I was reading about Worth and Jary. We know that Worth was part Delaware Indian, and until recent times, “half-breeds” (as they were unfortunately called in those days) would not have been a suitable marriage for a young white woman. Was this more acceptable on the frontier (although I don’t view Pennsylvania, where they came from as being the frontier)?

I know that Jary’s parents opposed the marriage, mainly because they were afraid that Jary would be dragged off into the woods where they would never see her again. And unfortunately, their fears came true. I thought it was so sad when Sayward reflected that Jary’s parents would be reminded on Jary’s “birth time” that she would be “thirty-nine years old today”, not realizing that “she was still thirty-seven lying deep in the black muck of this Northwest land.” That was truly so sad to me!

Again, until more recent times (from the 1960s on), my experience has been that young people were encouraged to marry within their faith, their community, or their culture - with the idea that marriage is a hard proposition to begin with, and a couple with similar backgrounds would have an easier time because they shared a common foundation. I am reminded of the movie Fiddler on the Roof, where cultures were changing and parents struggled with the new marital norms. I saw this movie as a young 20-something, and it really stuck with me through the years. The matchmakers of old (like Sayward, who thought Achsa was a better match for Louie and who, she herself, had a successful marriage with Portius Wheeler) had a great deal of wisdom!

I am looking forward to continuing the story in The Fields!

[Sara, Old School Classics]

Interesting question regarding Worth, Shirley. I did not think Worth was half-Indian, but only had some Indian blood. I know that is a fine distinction, but it seemed to me he was already accepted into the white community in Pennsylvania, so I thought his Indian background was much less than his Caucasian. It would still have been "marrying down" to Jary's people, I would think. Seyward's reflections about Jary were indeed sad!

Glad you finished this one before we go off into The Fields.

[Sue]

Shirley (stampartiste) wrote: "I just finished The Trees, and I loved it. Richter presented another side of the Westward Migration that I had never really delved into. Unlike the pioneers who mostly traveled in grou..."

I'm so glad you are caught up for The Awakening Land Trilogy, Shirley. I got started on The Fields today because I have to have it back for an intra library loan by Aug 7th and I don't have a lot of time to read right now.

I didn't like Worth or Louie either but Worth was not quite as bad as Louie who was abusive.

The Fiddler on the Roof is one of my all time favorite films, even though I had only seen it once until recently. It held up really well for me. I still loved it and plan to make it a yearly thing. I saw a more modern film to do with American Jewish or Muslim matchmaking but I can't remember the name. The mother made some good arguments for it. There are definitely times when a family member can see more clearly regarding a match. Of course in some cases it can be about money and end up abusive.

[Shirley (stampartiste)]

Sara... I agree with you that we only know that Worth had some Delaware ancestry... I just wondered if the peoples of Pennsylvania in 1800 had the same antipathy toward non-whites as the settlers did in the west in the mid to late 1800s. If Richter's novel is true to historical context, I'm guessing the situation was vastly different in Pennsylvania than in Texas, for example. It didn't seem that Jary's parents were as much concerned about Worth's ancestry as they were about his way of life and what that meant in terms of their eventual separation.

Another question I meant to ask the group... the trader had a "bound boy" who was never given a name by Richter. Was bound boy another term for indentured servant? Richter never explained the situation. Richter really almost treated him like a nonentity. Truly sad!

[Connie]

Shirley, you are correct that a bound boy was an indentured servant that has to work for a specified length of time. Often the parents would benefit from selling their child into servitude.

[Shirley (stampartiste)]

Thank you, Connie! Wow... life was so hard for kids back in those days. Even the "free" kids like the Luckett kids didn't fare much better. Such a totally different world!

[Shirley (stampartiste)]

Terry wrote: "More Books Under Discussion: For 2023, unscheduled

True Grit by Charles Portis — Terry, Sam?, Connie
To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck — Terry, Connie
Giant by Edna Ferber — Sue
The Searchers by ..."

Giant has been on my TBR list for a while, Terry, but several of the other books you mentioned sound good also. I'm game for whatever is decided.