The Trees

Über

The Trees, the first novel of Conrad Richter's trilogy The Awakening Land, is set in the wilderness of central Ohio. The simple plot — composed of what are essentially episodes in the life of a pioneer family before the virgin hardwood forest was cut down — is told in a third-person narration rich with folklore and suggestive of early backwoods speech. The central character is Sayward Luckett, the eldest daughter in a family who the narrator says "followed the woods as some families follow the sea." The book was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1940. The Trees was followed by The Fields and The Town. A single-volume trilogy was published in 1966.