The Awakening Land trilogy traces the transformation of a
middle-American landscape from wilderness to farmland to the site of
modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character.
The trilogy earned author Conrad Richter immense acclaim, ranking him
with the greatest of American mid-century novelists. It includes The
Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) and follows
the varied fortunes of Sayward Luckett and her family in southeastern
Ohio.
The Town, the longest novel of the trilogy, won the 1951 Pulitzer
Prize and received excellent reviews across the country. It tells how
Sayward completes her mission and lives to see the transition of her
family and her friends, American pioneers, from the ways of wilderness
to the ways of civilization. Here is the tumultuous story of how the
Lucketts grow to face the turmoil of the first half of the 19th century.
The Town is a much bigger book than either of its predecessors, and
with them comprises a great American epic.