in the 70s....
In junior high school, I lived in the library. It was my favorite room. I read a book, on one of those round racks, neither title nor author remembered, but the story stuck with me.
It was very sparsely written. It was a farm, a family; kinda isolated, perhaps a mountainside - I seem to remember it may have been Appalachia, but not sure anymore. Routine farm day, but someone gets hurt in the family. I don't remember if there were any names; I get the feeling it was all written almost as if at a distance. One member of the family dies, something else happens, another member takes on more chores, gets injured, another member catches an illness, until finally just a young boy was left, tending the farm best as he could, and then he dies. It was lonely, rather gothy, and... I fell in love with the story. I don't think I recall it too well, but I remember it was a young adult fiction paperback, pen and ink drawings, and terse but evocative prose. I get the feel of it being during the Great Depression; they lived a level of poverty I believe my grandparents may have known, bitter but familiar and thus endurable. It was rather stoic in tone, too.
I wish I could remember and/or find it (yes, I've googled and binged and yahoo'd all possible ways to look up the book - but I can't remember the title nor the author!) and I fear that I may have romanticized it a bit in my memory.
I graduated from JHS 111 in 1978.
It was very sparsely written. It was a farm, a family; kinda isolated, perhaps a mountainside - I seem to remember it may have been Appalachia, but not sure anymore. Routine farm day, but someone gets hurt in the family. I don't remember if there were any names; I get the feeling it was all written almost as if at a distance. One member of the family dies, something else happens, another member takes on more chores, gets injured, another member catches an illness, until finally just a young boy was left, tending the farm best as he could, and then he dies. It was lonely, rather gothy, and... I fell in love with the story. I don't think I recall it too well, but I remember it was a young adult fiction paperback, pen and ink drawings, and terse but evocative prose. I get the feel of it being during the Great Depression; they lived a level of poverty I believe my grandparents may have known, bitter but familiar and thus endurable. It was rather stoic in tone, too.
I wish I could remember and/or find it (yes, I've googled and binged and yahoo'd all possible ways to look up the book - but I can't remember the title nor the author!) and I fear that I may have romanticized it a bit in my memory.
I graduated from JHS 111 in 1978.