Fireweed (Bison Book) [Paperback]

Mildred Walker (Author), Annick Smith (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Bison Book | Publication Date: April 1, 1994

Mildred Walker was immediately recognized for the quality of her first fiction in 1934. Fireweed won the prestigious Avery and Jule Hopwood Award. The setting is a small lumber town in Upper Michigan, the stomping grounds of Paul Bunyan and the giants of Swedish, German, and Finnish lore. Young Celie and her husband, Joe Linsen, are the children of Scandinavian pioneers. Radios and flivvers have enlarged her world, and she longs to escape from an isolated place where wild violet fireweed grows to the edge of the woods.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Getting out of one's too-confining hometown is the lifelong dream of more than a few, and so it is with Celie Henderson, the paler, Swedish version of Dreiser's Carrie Meeber in Walker's long out-of-print 1934 novel. Celie lives and works with her family in the Michigan mill town of Flat Point, but has dreams of brighter lights in Milwaukee and Detroit. Celie chooses mill worker Joe Linsen for her husband, breaking off a dubious courtship with Arthur Farley, a piano-playing, juke-joint aficionado brought in by his uncle to take over mill operations. She spends most of her time agonizing over her decision, prodding Joe to look for a job in the city, fretting over the hard life and harsh winters in Flat Point. Ultimately, Celie must decide between the simple pleasures of her two children and sturdy Joe, and her yearnings for the city and finer things. Walker's novel is a thrilling dime-store page-turner, filled with sharply drawn characters and details--Celie is often seen in a bright green Sears catalogue dress and opera pumps, even in the snow. Only when Walker stretches toward the metaphorical does her novel falter. When ice blocks the road out of town, Celie becomes hysterical: " 'Joe, it's like you said, look; we couldn't get out if we wanted to.' Celie laughed a thin, harsh laugh that ended in a dry sob." Still, watching the couple as they grow, have children and come to accept each other will send the reader rocketing from front cover to back. Illustrations. Nebraska, which published Walker's Winter Wheat last season, will also be publishing her The Curlew's Cry this month.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The background, the history of the lumber industry and the Depression which deals it what looks like a death blow, is closely and adroitly woven into the warm and human fabric of the narrative."—New York Times

(New York Times )

"Simple and natural prose combines with local color that is not ''worked up'' to produce a narrative of clarity and agreeable smoothness such as many veterans of fiction never attain, yet this excellence is not the chance by-product of mere naivete. The characters are fully rounded, thought out from the depths of actual experience, and the incidents of a disarmingly unpretentious story, not without some pleasing passages of sentiment, are carefully chosen for the light they shed on these people."—Saturday Review of Literature

(Saturday Review of Literature )

"The words and the sentences fall in place with ease and naturalness and inevitability."—Nation

(Nation )

"Sure and vivid. . . . It adds another distinctive picture to the gallery of regional America."—Books

(Books )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 314 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (April 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803297580
• ISBN-13: 978-0803297586
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marriage in a small town, October 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Fireweed (Bison Book) (Paperback)

In Mildred Walker's Fireweed she examines one young woman's life in a small town. The life of her young heroine is told so matter a factly yet it is so powerful.

The young girl has dreams of moving to a big city, becoming famous, important and independent of her current life. Ultimately her life becomes all the things she is determined it will not be; burdened with marriage, children and financial concerns in her own hometown.

Fireweed transports the reader so completely into anothers life yet causes them to reflect on their own life, the decisions they have made and where those decisions have taken them.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Upper Peninsula comes alive, June 16, 2010

By 

Professor Brizz (KCK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fireweed (Bison Book) (Paperback)

Mildred Walker's Fireweed stands as one of the great debuts in American literature. It is, quite simply, a beautiful rendering of a time and place - in this case Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the early 20th century. Anyone who has visited the area will instantly be enthralled with Walker's beautiful evocation of the northern wilderness. Those who have never visited will want to after reading this book. Logging in the Great Lakes preceded the auto industry as the supreme element in the region's economy, but far too few books deal with the numerous lumber towns that dotted the landscape. This is by far among the best, illustrating the very human side to exploitation of various degrees and kind. An extraordinary book.