Pleasantly surprising collection of six short stories set around the folksy inhabitants of a rural community in Maine near the middle of the 19th century.
Admittedly a bunch of stories featuring an addle-brained village ‘softy’ being carted away to the poorhouse (‘Tom o’ the Blueb’ry Plains’), or a romance between a blind violin-maker and an old maid with a scarred face (‘The Village Stradivarius’) are hardly going to free of pathos, but Wiggin didn’t over-sweeten the pot.
Instead she used good-natured humour to add some spice to the meagre lots of her characters. ‘The Joining Tree’, about a forlorn husband who sees his runaway wife with another man at a traveling circus was particularly funny, as colloquially told by his workmates.
That penultimate tale about the blind and scarred old lovers was really very fine, worth reading on its own, especially welcome after the sad, downbeat endings which preceded it.
Contents
The village watch-tower — Tom o’ the blueb’ry plains — The nooning tree — The fore-room rug — A village Stradivarius — The eventful trip of the Midnight Cry