The Woodsman's Daughter [Hardcover]

Gwyn Hyman Rubio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2005

Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s first novel, Icy Sparks, was hailed as “vivid and unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review), “a combination of fire and ice that will take your breath away”(Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Now, Rubio has done it again with The Woodsman’s Daughter, a richly absorbing tale of the gothic South that, like Icy Sparks, has another unforgettable heroine at its heart.

Dalia is the brassy and beautiful eldest daughter of Monroe Miller, a shrewd turpentine farmer in 1800s southern Georgia haunted by a devastating secret. A resilient and resourceful young woman, Dalia strives to create a better life for herself and will stop at nothing to protect her family, but the sins of the father are never far behind.

In this spellbinding, page-turning epic, Rubio brings the swaying pines, humble shantytowns, and insular bustle of small-town living vibrantly to life. The Woodsman’s Daughter is certain to cement Rubio’s reputation as a major southern voice in American fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following 2001 Oprah pick Icy Sparks, Rubio's ambitious, faulty second novel comprises three generations' worth of neo-gothic saga. The cast includes Monroe Miller, a prosperous, self-made turpentine farmer in the pine woods of 1880s southern Georgia; Violet, his pathetic, laudanum-addicted wife; spoiled, impetuous Dalia, his eldest daughter; and younger Nellie Ann, blind from birth. Part I follows Monroe through weekend drinking bouts that help him bear the secret sin that shadows him, and a feud with richer neighbor Lollie Morris. Part II follows Dalia, suddenly bereft and on her own, as she starts a new life in the small town of Samson with her ineffectual son, Marion, to whom she is indifferent, and her robust daughter, Clara Nell, whom she suffocates with adoration and who is the protagonist of part III. Predictably, Clara Nell runs away to marry Dayton Morris, son of Lollie, her grandfather's enemy. Death and disaster dominate the last half of the novel, which has some tense moments and reasonable character depth, but this time out Rubio delivers very good genre writing and no more. And despite the suffering Dalia endures (and lots of "Yessams" from servants), she never changes from the selfish, conniving person she became as the woodsman's favorite daughter.
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From Booklist

Rubio's follow-up to her Oprah-anointed debut novel, Icy Sparks (1998), is set in rural post-Civil War Georgia. Fifteen-year-old Dalia Miller is the center of an unhappy household that includes her alcoholic father, Monroe; her distant mother, Violet; and her blind younger sister, Nellie Ann. Monroe is proud of his turpentine business and the group of workers that labor and live in his woods, but his wife and daughters find him coarse and unbearable when he drinks. An honorable but flawed man, Monroe tries to make amends to his family for a mistake made long ago. When Dalia discovers what this mistake is, her ambivalence toward her father turns to hate, and her actions further splinter the family. Eventually, Dalia finds herself alone and all but penniless, and she believes the only solution to her situation is to find a wealthy man to marry, though this does not lead to either the happiness or the stability she craves. Anchored by several complex, intricately drawn characters, Rubio's novel paints a rich portrait of the late-nineteenth-century South. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (August 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033219
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033218
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Novel, September 20, 2005

By 

David W. Pitts Jr. - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Woodsman's Daughter (Hardcover)

While it is true that The Woodsman's Daughter is a story of women struggling against the oppressions of late-19th/early 20th century South Georgia society--and a covincing one, making us feel the effects of that oppression in nearly every aspect of these women's lives--it is far more nuanced and complex a novel than such a description suggests. Rubio never reduces her characters to simple victims and oppressors. "Power, pure power," Dalia says, observing the beauty of her own body in the mirror. And it is. She has power over men's reputations, men's hearts, and men's ideas of themselves. With a near Flaubertian refusal to romanticize, Rubio allows her characters the ignorance that inevitably leads to such power's abuse. Male sensitivity is regarded as weakness, and male weakness is deplorable (Rubio makes female disgust palpable with her prose): it is a mistake, as Anais Nin once wrote, that nearly doomed our culture. The tragedy it brings upon these characters feels inevitable. Men--fathers, husbands, sons--who are too broad-spirited to fit the increasingly narrow ideals of what a man should be are cast into the shadows, where they remain like invisible presences, loving but mostly unloved, while the charlatans take the spotlight and abuse their position with increasingly cruelty. One feels especially for Monroe, who is both charlatan and man, and whose dilemma seems everyman's, as what drives his wife and children away from him seems not only the excesses of work or alcohol or sex, nor even the disease (blown up into all the proportions of Sin, as it is sexual) with which he afflicts them, but the audacity and drive from which these flaws result, and without which he too might very well have remained half-invisible shadow, unnoticed and unloved.

The concluding reconciliation makes one wish that these people, women and men alike, had had more courage to empathize--a courage that this novel seeks to give.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars compelling book, September 16, 2005

By 

Barbara (kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woodsman's Daughter (Hardcover)

I found The Woodsman's Daughter to be a work of deep understanding of the conflicts and conditions that threaten our lives. Rubio is both insightful and understanding of the advocacy of the issues that break people's hearts such as abortion, marriage and the family.

Dahlia's trials of childhood neglect, sisterly love and her lifetime of hard choices and heartbreaking moments all made for a most believable and absorbing read. The tribulations of lifetimes of hard living left Monroe, Dahlia and Clara Nell with unresolved wounds that were often inflicted on others as well as themselves.

The characters struggled but faced the tensions of their lives in familiar and often dangerous ways. Thank you Ms Rubio and I look forward to more afternoons of pure enchantment with another of your novels.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an old fashion epic--stunning writing and great characters, August 22, 2005

By 

[e-mail] "a big fan of this book" (Lexington, Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woodsman's Daughter (Hardcover)

Ms. Rubio has outdone herself. I enjoyed "Icy Sparks" very much but it was a fast and hilarious read with lots of heart. This novel has to be read slowly to appreaciate its tightly woven themes and its rich language. One is there with Dalia every step of the way as she courageously lives her flawed life--your mind may be ambivalent about her decisions but you heart is always rooting for her. Exquisite!