The Town (Richter novel)

The Town, the third novel in Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, continues the story of frontier woman Sayward (née Luckett) Wheeler and her family. At 280 pages, the book is considerably longer than the other books of the trilogy. The focus of this final book is on the dramatic changes to the town and region with rapid development and industrialization. The theme is dealing with change. Sayward lives through the development of her Ohio Valley settlement into a thriving town, with a variety of businesses and industry. She becomes wealthy by pioneer standards by selling off parcels of her own land to newcomers.

The town changes its name from Moonshine Church to Americus in a successful quest to be named the county seat. The town government constructs civic improvements such as a new bridge and canal. Sayward's husband, Portius Wheeler, convinces her to give up their old log cabin and move into a fine new brick mansion house he builds in the downtown section of Americus. He believes this is in keeping with his position as the town's attorney. Sayward eventually gets used to the luxury of her new home, but also feels a sense of loss for her former frontier way of life.

Sayward is reunited with two long-lost members of her family, who were introduced in the earlier books of the trilogy. Her father, Worth Luckett, had abandoned the family to live a hunter's life after his favorite child, Sulie, was lost in the forest. After an absence of many years, he returns to Americus and tries to re-establish relationships with his grown children. On his deathbed, Worth confides that he found their sister Sulie alive; she had become fully assimilated as a Lenape (Delaware Indian) and married a Lenape man. Sayward and her remaining sister, Genny, travel to the Indiana town where Sulie resides and try to reconnect with her. Sulie claims not to know them as she is now part of the tribe and does not want to leave. Her sisters conclude Sulie is lost to them.

Sayward also deals with the problems of one or another of her nine surviving children. Her youngest son, Chancey, causes her the most worry. He is a quiet, sensitive youngster with frequent health problems. He often retreats into daydreams of belonging to another family who will understand him better.

As Chancey grows older, he feels an increasing sense of separation from his family, and often clashes with his mother over their differing views on work and progress. He becomes close friends with Rosa Tench, a girl from the poor side of town in whom he senses a kindred spirit. Their families finally tell him that Rosa is the result of Portius Wheeler's extramarital affair with the local school mistress, meaning that Rosa and Chancey are half-brother and sister. They are forbidden to see each other and are threatened with the law, but they continue to meet in secret.

Finally, Chancey tells Rosa he can't see her anymore. At the town fair, Rosa tries to force a confrontation with him, cutting loose their hot air balloon. Chancey deflates the balloon and returns them safely. When Rosa realizes that Chancey will never defy his family and take her away from Americus, she commits suicide with the same knife used to cut the balloon's tether.[1] (This plot-line was not in the 1978 TV mini-series of the same name, where the pair were separated as children, not young adults.)

After Rosa's death, Chancey becomes embittered toward his family and moves out to a boarding house in town. He then moves on to the larger river port city of Cincinnati, where he becomes a journalist. He works as an editor of a newspaper, writing articles from a socialist point of view that criticize industrial progress and some prominent people in the state, especially members of his family. He returns to see his family only when necessary.

Chancey returns in 1861 on the eve of the American Civil War (although the year is not given, the book refers to Union troops answering the call of their “backwoods president,” meaning Abraham Lincoln). He has come for his mother's last days. After being supported for years by anonymous contributions, his newspaper has failed and been sold off at auction after the contributions stopped. He hopes that he may inherit some money from Sayward's estate to enable him to start over.

At home, Chancey learns that his mother had been the anonymous contributor who financed his paper all those years. He had often criticized her in print, and she did not agree with his published views. He also learns that she has saved clippings of all of the poems, articles, and editorials he has written. Chancey realizes that he may have been wrong about his mother, and therefore wrong about many of his other conclusions. He recognizes that he will have to “ponder his own questions and travel his way alone.”[2]

Richter conducted extensive research in order to convey the historic speech of the early 19th-century pioneers of the Ohio Valley, many of whom originally emigrated from Pennsylvania and the Upper South. (For example, they referred to “trees” as “butts”.) Richter drew from his research in rare collections of old manuscripts, letters, and records that documented the speech of early 18th- and 19th-century residents. His sources included Historical Collections of Ohio by Henry Howe and Pioneer Pennsylvania, a compilation of archaic Pennsylvanian slang by Henry W. Shoemaker. In addition, he interviewed scholars and former neighbors of pioneer heritage whom he had known in his home state of Pennsylvania and in the Ohio Valley.[3][4]

Richter wrote that this early form of spoken language no longer survived in the Ohio Valley. He learned that it was found in some areas of the South and Southwestern parts of the country. He noted that, although it is often mistaken for a "native" form of speech there, it should be considered “a living reminder of the great mother tongue of early America.” [4]

In keeping with the passage of time, Richter uses the “pioneer” form of speech in The Town less frequently than in earlier books of the trilogy. By this time, Sayward's husband, her children, and many of the newcomers to the town are better educated and have abandoned the old forms of expression. Toward the end of the book, Sayward is one of the few surviving members of the founding generation of the town. Richter expresses only her thoughts and speech in the “pioneer” dialect.

The Ohio University Press released paperback editions of The Awakening Land trilogy in 1991. Chicago Review Press issued reprints of the original Knopf editions in 2017.

• The Awakening Land: The 1978 miniseries based on the trilogy.

• Photos of the first edition of The Town