Pulitzer Prize Fiction Winner
Now in November
by Josephine Winslow Johnson
Summary
Narrated by Marget Haldemarne, the middle of three sisters, the novel records a single brutal year on a debt-burdened Missouri farm during the Depression as drought, illness, and inner conflict press the family toward crisis. Johnson writes in a spare, almost poetic prose that fuses landscape and emotion, treating the natural world as a moral as well as physical force. It is a small, intense book about scarcity, longing, and the limits of love.
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Historical Context & Significance
Johnson was only 24 when she won, making her one of the youngest Pulitzer recipients. The novel captured the desperation of Depression-era rural America with stark, poetic intensity.