The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer [Mass Market Paperback]

Gary Paulsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2002

For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day’s an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust—always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly. He discovers the secret sadness and generosity to be found on a lonely farm in the middle of nowhere. Then he joins up with a carnival and becomes a grunt, running a ride and shilling for the geek show. He’s living the hard carny life and beginning to see the world through carny eyes. He’s tough. Cynical. By the end of the summer he’s pretty sure he knows it all. Until he meets Ruby.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The striking cover picture of a beautiful young man's bare, muscular back foreshadows the sensuality of this brilliant autobiographical novel for older boys by the author of Hatchet and Soldier's Heart. In this remarkable book, Gary Paulsen reworks material from his own life that has appeared earlier in his novels, to tell--with simple words and Hemingwayesque cadences--the story of a summer when a 16-year-old boy became a man.

Fleeing his mother's confusing drunken advances, a boy runs away and finds work in the beet fields of North Dakota. Wielding a hoe for long, hot days, he learns about cruelty from the farmer's wife and about kindness from his Mexican coworkers. Later an attraction to a girl glimpsed only once leads him into accepting a job driving a tractor, but a brush with the deputy sheriff sends him running again, only to be taken in by a sleazy carnival as a roustabout. He learns to shill for the geek, a fake wild man of Borneo who bites the heads off chickens, and yearns for Ruby, the voluptuous hootchy-kootchy dancer. During the summer the boy learns about life and people and his own ability to work and survive, and when Ruby invites him into her bed, his transition to manhood is complete.

While the sensual scenes and occasionally gritty language may make this novel problematic for adults, there is not a 15-year-old boy around who would not find that this poetic, powerful novel speaks to his soul. (Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

No stranger to memoir, Paulsen (My Life in Dog Years; Father Water, Mother Woods) returns to a series of episodes he previously fictionalized in the 1977 Tiltawhirl John and now presents the material "as real as I can write it, and as real as I can remember it happening," as he says in an author's note. It is punishingly harsh stuff: 16 years old in 1955, "the boy," as he is called throughout, wakes up to find his drunk mother in his bed and realizes that tonight "something [is] different, wrong, about her need for him." He runs away and lands a backbreaking job on a beet farm in North Dakota, where his wages are cancelled out by the farmer's charges for the use of his hoe, for the tumbledown lodgings and for the only food available, sandwiches made of week-old bread that cost a dollar apiece. Eventually the boy starts working with a carnival, where he learns carny scams and is initiated into sex by the carnival stripper, Ruby. In a mannered prose style, Paulsen serves up strings of studied, impartial observations in paragraph-long sentences. The technique calls attention to itself, as does the occasional circumlocution (e.g., the seemingly endless sentence describing intercourse with Ruby concludes with "sinking into the wetness, the forever-warm wetness of Ruby"). Paulsen fans, however, will probably respond to the vote of confidence in their ability to handle such gritty subjects, and no one can fail to appreciate the author's transcendence of the appalling circumstances he describes. Ages 14-up.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440415578
• ISBN-13: 978-0440415572
• Product Dimensions: 3.2 x 0.5 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,621,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Teens > Authors, A-Z > ( P ) > Paulsen, Gary
  • #83 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Social Issues > Runaways

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Beet Fields is truly memorable, October 24, 2000

By 

Jan Chapman (Medina, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer (Hardcover)

Paulsen's The Beet Fields does indeed evoke Hemingway in its spare, evocative prose. I have been a bit underwhelmed by some of Paulsen's recent fiction for young adults and was pleasantly surprised to read such a superb memoir. Yes, I did buy it for the young adult collection of my library and am puzzled by another reviewer's comment that it was "inappropriate" for her library. It is indeed unflinching in its look at Paulsen's often brutal childhood experiences, but that makes it all the more memorable.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful prose, but . . ., January 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer (Hardcover)

The Beet Fields is full of wonderful writing and imagery, but its characters lack the redeeming qualities that I would hope to find in a YA novel.

The 16-year-old boy who is the protagonist of the novel is introduced to us as his mother is attempting to seduce him. From that point, the confusion that he must feel develops into a nearly uncontrollable urge for sex. As he works to support himself, he encounters many people, but none take on a true role as mentor, or even friend, to the boy. When he finally fulfills his sexual desires with an older woman, we see no consequences either for the woman or the boy; in fact, the boy has now become "a man" who continues his rather unfocused life by joining the service.

Paulsen further complicates matters (for want of a better phrase) by presenting Mexican migrant farm workers who buck the stereotypes, yet the carnival workers and most of the other characters he encounters follow the stereotypes with a vengeance.

The story needs redeeming characters or, at least, consequences for actions that occur. All we see is a boy wandering through life with no purpose other than making it through each day. While that might be the case for some adolescents, I found no hope presented for those young people in this novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Beet Feilds...By Caroline W., December 12, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer (Mass Market Paperback)

The Beet Fields: Memories of the Sixteenth Summer
The young boy never stopped working, went on until the day was done, and learned about the world and life in just one long summer. The book The Beet Fields is about this young boy's summer when he learns many life's lessons. He goes on many adventures over his long summer, starting out with parents who are serious alcoholics. However his whole life changes when he ran from his life in search of a new beginning. This book is great for teens, because it follows a young boy through the many adventures in life.
He left his home for something different a new life. On his adventures he learns about migrant labor, hunger, friendship, profanity and lust. In the book he is never given a name, we just know him as boy, the young innocent man curious for adventure. He discovers how life can be dangerous and exhilarating. He learns the secret of sadness to be found on an isolated farm in the middle of nowhere. He finds his other adventures by joining a carnival and running the geek show. Near the end of the summer he thinks he knows it all, all the lessons to be learned in life. When he meets Ruby, his life changes. She urges him to not leave the world without a fight. It's one long interesting summer for the boy.
The Beet Fields is a great guidance for young teens. His life brings journeys across different people and jobs. The boy sticks with what he needs to do to make a living and fights through his down times and enjoys the good ones. He doesn't follow in his parents path and instead hoes his own down the beet fields. This book is a great example of sticking and working with what you have. This quote shows how the boy keeps going even though he would much rather be somewhere else with someone else "Rows of beets a mile long. Left and right for a mile and then turn and start back, halfway up to meet the Mexicans coming back. Eleven dollars an acre. Four rows to the acre, a half acre a day, all day the hoes cutting, left and right, the rows never ending, and even trying to catch up with the Mexicans was not enough to stop the boredom, nothing to stop the awful boredom of the beets." On the next page it continues, "He worked hard, his head down, the hoe snaking left and right. An hour could have passed, a minute, a day, a year. He did not look up, kept working ..."The book goes on in great detail about his other adventures. He finds other jobs working on different farms. He makes it almost halfway across the United States on his own catching up with other people, and ends up with a carnival job traveling across the U.S. How the author describes how he manages his life. This is a great read for teens looking for an interesting and adventures book.