Yonnondio Author:Tillie Olsen In this novel, the first draft of which was written in the depression of the Thirties and rooted deeply in the emotion of that decade, Tillie Olsen has produced a book both timeless and hauntingly timely. The Holbrooks, a family brutalized by poverty, migrate from a coal mining town to a farm to an industrial city in search of a more tolerable l... more »ife. The sources of human endurance and hope, the maiming power of circumstance, are profoundly revealed through characters transformed into alive human beings who become a lived experience for the reader. Anna Holbrook, the mother of the family, emerges as one of the most believable and enduring women in American literature.
Set aside for nearly forty years, and thought lost, portions of this book were unexpectedly found and the reconstruction of this novel necessitated, in the author's words, "the work of this older writer in arduous partnership with that long-ago younger one" to reclaim the book.
"A remarkable book...great depth and vibrancy... It is a terrible losing battle, the battle to get out from under that the poor almost never win, and Tillie Olsen portrays it with relentless compassion and with a stark, impressionistic vividness unlike the style of any other writer I know" -New York Times Book Review« less