Product Overview
From Follett
Includes bibliographical references.;1. The illustrious Field family -- 2. Inside-self and outside-self -- 3. Beauty, loss, and the emergence of a poet's heart -- 4. If once you have slept on an island -- 5. Special student -- 6. Taxis and toadstools -- 7. The lonely and difficult years -- 8. Spriggin, the whippet, and the birth of Hitty -- 9. Mr. Mississippi -- 10. The Newbery medal -- 11. Love and pain, bound up in time -- 12. Newlyweds and nomads -- 13. Not every bud may bear -- 14. All this and Heaven too -- 15. Hannah -- 16. Hope and motherhood -- 17. Miracle -- 18. You'll never be quite the same -- 19. And now tomorrow. A compelling blend of biography and memoir, The Field House recounts the life of writer Rachel Field--whose works for adults and children were once wildly successful but are now largely forgotten--and how her chance "meeting" with the author through the whispers of an old, neglected island home in Maine sparked a startling friendship across time and impossible distance.
From the Publisher
Born of illustrious New England stock, Rachel Field was a National Book Award-winning novelist, a Newbery Medal-winning children's writer, a poet, playwright, and rising Hollywood success in the early twentieth century. Her light was abruptly extinguished at the age of forty-seven, when she died at the pinnacle of her personal happiness and professional acclaim.
Fifty years later, Robin Clifford Wood stepped onto the sagging floorboards of Rachel's long-neglected home on the rugged shores of an island in Maine and began dredging up Rachel's history. She was determined to answer the questions that filled the house's every crevice: Who was this vibrant, talented artist whose very name entrances those who still remember her work? Why is that work--so richly remunerated and widely celebrated in her lifetime--so largely forgotten today? The journey into Rachel's world took Wood further than she ever dreamed possible, unveiling a life fraught with challenge, and buried by tragedy, and yet incandescent with joy.
The Field House is a book about beauty--beauty in Maine island landscapes, in friendship, love, and heartbreak; beauty hidden beneath a woman's woefully unbeautiful exterior; beauty in a rare, delightful spirit that still whispers from the past. Just listen.