THE TREES

“They moved along in the bobbing, springy gait of a family that followed the woods as some families follow the sea.” In that first sentence Conrad Richter sets the mood of this magnificent epic of the American wilderness. Toward the close of the eighteenth century the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio river was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here the Lucketts, a wild, woodsfaring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation.
 
Richter has written, not a historical novel, of which there are so many, but a novel of authentic early American life, of which there are so few. It is the primitive story of Worth Luckett, the hunter, and of Jary, his woman; of Genny, Wyitt, Achsa, and Sulie, their woods-wild children; of the bound boy and the Solitary and Jake Tench; but principally of the oldest girl, Sayward Luckett, whos people as far back as she knew had always been hunters and gunsmiths to hunters, but who, through the quiet, growing, and yet tragic oppression of the trees, turns her back at last on her life as a hunter’s child and becomes a tiller of the soil.
 
This novel of great lyrical beauty and high excitement tells the story of the transition of American pioneers from the ways of the wilderness to the ways of civilization. Here is the true American epic. Here is the raw adventure, swift and cruel in its episodes; but here too is the poetry of loneliness. Here is a portrait of frontier life as it really must have seemed to the pioneers. Here in short is a masterpiece by the man who gave us The Sea of Grass.
Conrad Richter was born in Pennsylvania, the son, grandson, nephew, and great-nephew of clergymen. He was intended for the ministry, but at thirteen he declined a scholarship and left preperatory school for high school, from which he graduated at fifteen. After graduation, he went to work. His family on his mother's side was identified with the early American scene, and from boyhood on he was saturated with tales and the color of Eastern pioneer days. In 1928 he and his small family moved to New Mexico, where his heart and mind were soon caputred by the Southwest. From this time on he devoted himself to fiction. The Sea of Grass and The Trees were awarded the gold medal of the Societies of Libraries of New York University in 1942. The Town received the Pulitzer Prize in 1951, and The Waters of Kronos won the 1960 National Book Award for fiction. His other novels included The Fields (1946), The Lady (1957), A Simple Honorable Man (1962), The Grandfathers (1964), A Country of Strangers (1966; a companion to The Light in the Forest), and The Aristocrat, published just before his death in 1968. View titles by Conrad Richter

About

“They moved along in the bobbing, springy gait of a family that followed the woods as some families follow the sea.” In that first sentence Conrad Richter sets the mood of this magnificent epic of the American wilderness. Toward the close of the eighteenth century the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio river was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here the Lucketts, a wild, woodsfaring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation.
 
Richter has written, not a historical novel, of which there are so many, but a novel of authentic early American life, of which there are so few. It is the primitive story of Worth Luckett, the hunter, and of Jary, his woman; of Genny, Wyitt, Achsa, and Sulie, their woods-wild children; of the bound boy and the Solitary and Jake Tench; but principally of the oldest girl, Sayward Luckett, whos people as far back as she knew had always been hunters and gunsmiths to hunters, but who, through the quiet, growing, and yet tragic oppression of the trees, turns her back at last on her life as a hunter’s child and becomes a tiller of the soil.
 
This novel of great lyrical beauty and high excitement tells the story of the transition of American pioneers from the ways of the wilderness to the ways of civilization. Here is the true American epic. Here is the raw adventure, swift and cruel in its episodes; but here too is the poetry of loneliness. Here is a portrait of frontier life as it really must have seemed to the pioneers. Here in short is a masterpiece by the man who gave us The Sea of Grass.

Author

Conrad Richter was born in Pennsylvania, the son, grandson, nephew, and great-nephew of clergymen. He was intended for the ministry, but at thirteen he declined a scholarship and left preperatory school for high school, from which he graduated at fifteen. After graduation, he went to work. His family on his mother's side was identified with the early American scene, and from boyhood on he was saturated with tales and the color of Eastern pioneer days. In 1928 he and his small family moved to New Mexico, where his heart and mind were soon caputred by the Southwest. From this time on he devoted himself to fiction. The Sea of Grass and The Trees were awarded the gold medal of the Societies of Libraries of New York University in 1942. The Town received the Pulitzer Prize in 1951, and The Waters of Kronos won the 1960 National Book Award for fiction. His other novels included The Fields (1946), The Lady (1957), A Simple Honorable Man (1962), The Grandfathers (1964), A Country of Strangers (1966; a companion to The Light in the Forest), and The Aristocrat, published just before his death in 1968. View titles by Conrad Richter