A Ruth Suckow Omnibus
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- $35.99
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- $35.99
Publisher Description
This collection of ten short stories and one novella reintroduces a superb regional writer whose fiction, though firmly planted in the soil of the Midwest, stretches in significance to include all human drama.
Despite her wide experience, Ruth Suckow became and remained a writer interested in small-town and small-city life. All her fiction contains deep and penetrating insights into the motivations of characters who are upheld by their dreams, memories of small-town childhoods, and the need to make sense of the contrast between past and present, idealism and practicality, conformity and individualism. These expressive, resonant stories will be welcomed by all new readers and by Ruth Suckow fans everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The republication of these 11 stories and the title novella by Iowa writer Suckow (1892-1960) is a welcome event. Several are from Children and Older People (1931), others from magazines like Good Housekeeping and Smart Set. A regionalist, Suckow celebrates with gentle humor the foibles and emotional richness of unsophisticated folk stuck on the farm or in small towns. The title novella is a triumphant evocation, laced with irony, of turn-of-the-century collegiate life. Not only is it riveting fiction about Hester, who imbibes the school spirit all too thoroughly, but it's a gold mine for social historians. The high price of adultery for a pretty woman in a gossipy town is delineated with bitter charm in ``Susan and the Doctor.'' A visit from the in-laws to a ``Godforsaken burg in Colorado'' is treated in ``Visiting.'' When ladies of the club get together in ``What Have I?'' the memory of an old scandal unnerves Winifred. ``The Crick'' and ``The Little Girl from Town'' are about childhood. These delightful tales of nostalgic Americana are just right for summertime reading in the backyard or on the front porch swing.
