Fireweed - by Mildred Walker (Paperback)

About the Book

Winner of the prestigious Avery and Julie Hopwood Award, this compelling novel tells the story of young Celie Linsen who, introduced to the outside world by radio and flivvers, longs to escape her remote Upper Michigan home town. Drawings.

Book Synopsis

Mildred Walker was immediately recognized for the quality of her first fiction in 1934. Fireweed won the prestigious Avery and Jule Hopwood Award. The setting is a small lumber town in Upper Michigan, the stomping grounds of Paul Bunyan and the giants of Swedish, German, and Finnish lore. Young Celie and her husband, Joe Linsen, are the children of Scandinavian pioneers. Radios and flivvers have enlarged her world, and she longs to escape from an isolated place where wild violet fireweed grows to the edge of the woods.

From the Back Cover

Mildred Walker was immediately recognized for the quality of her first fiction in 1934. Fireweed won the prestigious Avery and Jule Hopwood Award. The setting is a small lumber town in Upper Michigan, the stomping grounds of Paul Bunyan and the giants of Swedish, German, and Finnish lore. Young Celie and her husband, Joe Linsen, are the children of Scandinavian pioneers. Radios and flivvers have enlarged her world, and she longs to escape from an isolated place where wild violet fireweed grows to the edge of the woods.

Review Quotes

"Simple and natural prose combines with local color that is not 'worked up' to produce a narrative of clarity and agreeable smoothness such as many veterans of fiction never attain, yet this excellence is not the chance by-product of mere naivete. The characters are fully rounded, thought out from the depths of actual experience, and the incidents of a disarmingly unpretentious story, not without some pleasing passages of sentiment, are carefully chosen for the light they shed on these people."--Saturday Review of Literature

"Sure and vivid. . . . It adds another distinctive picture to the gallery of regional America."--Books

"The background, the history of the lumber industry and the Depression which deals it what looks like a death blow, is closely and adroitly woven into the warm and human fabric of the narrative."--New York Times

"The words and the sentences fall in place with ease and naturalness and inevitability."--Nation

About the Author

Annick Smith is a freelance writer, editor, and filmmaker. Her story, "It's Come to This," appeared in Best American Short Stories, 1992. She was coeditor, with William Kittredge, of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. Her film credits include Heartland (executive producer) and A River Runs Through It (coproducer).