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Book Review
After her mother dies when she is young, her Grandmam rears her though the family includes her father, stepmother, and stepbrothers. Because her grandmother is wise and caring, the others really do not matter much, although she dislikes the stepmother who is unkind to her. She moves to town and soon meets and falls in love with Virgil Feltner. They live with his parents, but World War II interferes, and Virgil is killed overseas. His daughter Margaret, whom he never sees, is the consolation for Hannah and Mr. and Mrs. Feltner. Hannah's life is not over, though she feels that it is. She tells about it from the perspective of her old age, and the characters provide the humor and stories which make this book such a pleasure to read. It is beautifully written: "He came home to these ridges and hillsides and bottomlands and woods and streams that he had known ever since he was born. And this place, more than all the places he had seen in his absence, was what he wanted. It was what he had learned to want in the midst of killing and dying, terror, cruelty, hate, hunger, thirst, blood, and fire." The farm and surrounding countryside are vital to Hannah and to us. She talks about the "membership," the group of family and friends who work for and with each other, making survival and even a little prosperity possible. One of the lovely aspects of Hannah Coulter is the fact that the characters appreciate each other. Hannah says this about Nathan: "The gentleness I knew in him seemed to be calling out, and it was gentleness in me that answered. That gentleness, calling and answering, giving and taking, brought us together. It brought us into the room of love. It made our place clear around us."
Hannah Coulter is a book that you will be glad you read. It is available at the Mary Willis Library.
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