Customer Reviews

The Fields of Home

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
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The Fields of Home tells about Ralph's experience on his grandfather's farm after being sent away from the city. His grandfather, a cranky and miserable person, is delighted to get the extra help, and soon Ralph is worn to the bone. As the book progresses, Ralph realizes that tucked inside his grandfather is a spark of kindness, which grows bigger through the book. Ralph soon becomes good friends with his grandfather, and helps him clear a field that was becoming overgrown. This was his grandfather's desire. He was hating to see his precious farm reclaimed by the wilderness. Ralph and his grandfather are soon the best of friends, and they both understand the need to compromise. Ralph's grandfather gives in to some of Ralph's ideas, and Ralph is willing to be taught how to do some things the "old way." I am 13, but my father, who is almost 50, still enjoys reading these wonderful books. I highly reccomend the others in the series. This book touches your heart!

Ralph Moody had the knack for "art-for-art's-sake" disguise. One important ingredient of his books that is seldom included in the reviews is the historical reality of the characters. If one was brought up ( as I was ) in Maine, farming with horses - the reality of the narrative is apparent. Reviewers not intimate with this culture and time still use terms such as "believable" in describing this book. The reason for this believability is simple - Moody was writing about real people who actually existed! Tom Gould ( the Grandfather ) was a Civil War Vet - Company I, 16th Maine; he actually did work the farm described in the book; his father, Jacob, actually did clear the farm from the wilderness; Tom actually was born when his father was 72, etc., etc. A boulder in nearby Hillside Cemetery in Lisbon memorializes Jacob, Tom and the farm which is the setting for this book. This is a cultural thumbprint of turn-of-the-century Maine . One might also explore the writings of another of Tom's grandsons ( and Ralph Moody's first cousin ), Maine author, John Gould.

The whole set of Ralph Moody books rank at the very top of read-aloud books with our children. We have read them all several times. This is my favorite. What a powerful story of the contending of wills between an old man and his grandson. You won't forget this story.

This is the chronological fifth in Ralph Moody's series of memoirs, and while I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I have the previous titles, it definitely chronicles a major phase in his life. In 1912, at age fourteen and a half, he has repeatedly run afoul of the police chief in Medford, who seems to think he's bound for reform school, so his mother sends him to Maine to stay on her father's farm. Unfortunately she neglects to explain to her father exactly why she's doing it, and Grandfather labors under the delusion that she wants him to "make a man of him." And there Ralph's troubles begin.

Grandfather Gould is perhaps the most vivid character I've found yet in Moody's books. Past 70, he is (as his younger brother, Uncle Levi, explains to Ralph) bound by his position as a son born when his father was even older than himself (and already had a grown-up "first family") and "spoiled rotten" in consequence. "Father and the Almighty stand about shoulder to shoulder in Thomas's eyes," says Levi, "and the land they left him is holy ground." He can't see any way of doing things except the way his father taught him--the old, pre-industrial, farm-by-hand way--and as age closes in on him he has let the place go back mostly to pasture. Ralph sometimes comes close to tears at being called useless and worthless and a "tarnal fool boy," getting senseless jobs to do and being rebuked for "wastin'" or wanting to use "work-saving contraptions." Cranky, erratic, often laid low by the chronic malaria that is his legacy from a term in a Confederate prison camp, Grandfather succeeds in driving away just about everyone who cares about him, including his brother and his long-suffering housekeeper Millie. Another splendid character, as well drawn as any human in the book, is "the yella colt," an irascible buckskin work horse who's far from being a colt but apparently was never told so; to save his own hide Ralph is forced to improvise a way of teaching him who's boss, though Grandfather keeps undoing his efforts.

In this book, Moody admits for the first time how difficult it was for him to adjust to life in the East after his years in Colorado and how much he missed both the "wide open spaces" and his work with his understanding father. More than once his grandfather's ways rub him so raw that he makes plans to run away and go back to the West he loves. Yet he also experiences the innocent joys of first love, and in the end he realizes how truly alike he and Grandfather are and how Maine has a beauty of its own, and the book ends on a positive note as the two seem to reconcile, having finally agreed to try some of the boy's ideas.

One of my most treasured possessions is a letter Ralph Moody sent me when I was a little boy many moons ago. I have read all these books and read them all again from time to time. They are wonderful stories of the way things used to be. They teach some positive life lessons without being too sugar coated. I have heard that many home schoolers use them too. Ralph wasn't a perfect angel when he was working his way through early adulthood, but he was a great man and a great story teller.

I must confess that at the beginning of this book I didn't think I was going to like it nearly as well as the other books Ralph Moody has written. I was frustrated with the grandfather and felt terrible for Ralph and his inability to do anything that would please the old man. As the story develops, Moody does a wonderful job of giving you a peek into grandfather's past and his character, winning him some sympathy and a little understanding from the reader. Sometimes we are hardest on those we love most. This especially seems to have been the case in generations gone by. Uncle Levi, one of the most lovable characters in the series, does his best to try to explain to Ralph how his grandfather really feels about him and about "the war" the old man was going through trying to hold onto the old ways of doing things, yet realizing that the new ways were the only things that would keep the farm going. Taking Levi's advice in how to deal with his grandfather's fits of temper, Ralph goes on to develop a close relationship with his grandfather and some of the love that the older man had for the family farm.

I had so many questions after reading this book that weren't answered in any of the other Ralph Moody books. Other reviewers have had some of the same questions. After doing a little online research I came across a book written by Ralph Moody's cousin, Franklin Gould Jr., called "A Woman's Right," which tells the story of the grandmother who is absent from "Fields of Home", having left her husband years before. (One of my questions answered.) At the end of the book--actually on the last page--it says that the main house of the Gould Farm burned in 1913. Since Ralph was born in 1898, this would put the fire at nearly the same time he writes of in "The Fields of Home". It must have broken his and his grandfather's heart. This would explain why Ralph left the farm and returned to Massachusetts as the next book in the series tells that he did. I still have questions, but I'm hoping some more reading will clear some of them up. There are lots of books about the Lisbon Ridge farm. The Gould family had many very readable authors. Franklin Gould Sr. wrote "The Making of a Maine Man", which I have just borrowed from the library. His son wrote the book I mentioned earlier "A Woman's Right", which fills in lots of gaps in the family history. Ralph Gould (Ralph Moody's maternal uncle) wrote "Yankee Drummer" and "Yankee Storekeeper" in which he references growing up on the farm "near Topsham". John Gould, Ralph Moody's cousin and Franklin Jr.'s brother, was a famous columnist for the Christian Science Monitor and was able to buy the family farm years after the fire and rebuild the house as close to the original as possible. Last I knew, though this house is not in the family any more, it is still there on Lisbon Ridge. He is the author of "Farmer Takes a Wife" and "The House that Jacob Built" as well as many others. In his books he talks as if the farm house burned after he and his wife were married, but everything else that I read points to it having burned many years before, so perhaps he was just taking literary liberties? Anyways--had the farm not burned, we might not have the rest of Moody's books. His life's path took him away from the farm, but as a Maine girl, I'm glad part of his life took place here, and I like to think that the experiences he had "on Grampa's farm" played a part in the man he was to become.

My children enjoyed this series. They compared it to the "Little House" books. Written from a young mans' perspective.

"Little Britches" is one of the best books I've ever read. It would make a great movie if it could be done without being too syrupy. With that said I wish I was nearly as satisfied with "The Fields of Home" in Ralph Moody's series of autobiographical books. I'm sorry but I found Moody's grandfather to be a real mental case, an almost constant fount of mental abuse. We learn that beloved Uncle Levi (Moody's great uncle) can't stand to visit his brother (Moody's grandfather) for lengthy periods of time, that Grandpa's son Frank (the brother of Moody's mother) had clearly left the farm just as soon as he was old enough to do so, and that even Grandpa's tough housekeeper finally reached the limits of her tolerance. It's perhaps just coincidence but Moody's mother never returned to visit her father in any of Moody's books. Moody was very lucky that he came to the farm with enough positive life experiences to maintain a strong and healthy respect for himself. By the end of "Fields", thanks to Ralph, and to some degree Uncle Levi, it seems that a great deal has been done to rejuvenate the farm, improve its income, and fulfill Grandpa's dreams. Grandpa is portrayed as almost a different man. In the last paragraph of the book it is well into autumn, the crops have been harvested and grandfather and Moody are looking contentedly over the farm. A wood thrush and a whippoorwill are singing. Really!? These migratory songbirds would have quit singing weeks ago and would have left Maine for warmer climes by now anyway. I'm sure Moody knew this and yet he threw it in at the end of the story to create a contrived idyllic ending. While Moody deserves credit for remaining loyal to his grandfather and using the experience to make himself more adept at dealing with dificult people, I found the ending of "Fields" both too slick and incomplete. Despite the fact that Moody came to the conclusion in "Fields" that the farm was where he needed and wanted to be, that was not to be the case. Why? In his next book (Shaking the Nickel Bush) we find him somewhere else after only a couple years or so and there is no mention of the farm or Grandpa. Are we to believe that Grandpa, now more than 70 years old, was physically able to keep doing all the things that needed to be done on the farm? Who helped Grandpa survive in the last years of his life? Did he ever really get over being a cantankerous old S.O.B. to be around? While "Fields" is Moody's longest book, it lacks completion.

I cannot praise Ralph Moody enough. This book is so well structured and well written that it is obviously a "made" work, but that certainly doesn't make it false. It is a truthful story inasmuch as the characters speak as they should, and the times are brought alive as good writing should do.
An emotion-packed experience perfect for taking us back one hundred years. Highly recommended!

I recommend this series as a great alternative for boys who just don't like the idea of the Little House series. It is a well written series that really keeps the young and old alike interested in the way life was 100yrs ago.