Editions

The Dollmaker

The Dollmaker

'A terrifying lesson in US history – and a haunting tragedy' Guardian

Gertie is the young mother of five children – uneducated, determined, strong. Her only ambition is to own her own small farm in the Kentucky hills where she lives, to become self-sufficient and free.

Whenever the struggle to live off the land eases, her inarticulate imagination takes its freedom and flies. Because Gertie is also an artist, a sculptor of wood and creator of beautiful handmade dolls.

When the family is forced to move to industrial Detroit, with its pre-fab houses, appliances bought on credit and neighbours on every side, life turns into an incomprehensible, lonely nightmare. Gertie realises she must adapt to a life where land, family and creativity are replaced by just one thing: the constant need for money.

‘A masterwork… A superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness’ New York Times

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

Reviews

  • A masterwork...A superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness

    New York Times

  • A book of biblical intensity... With vivid insights into racial, religious and labour tensions, this is a terrifying lesson in US history – and a haunting tragedy

    Guardian

  • An extraordinary novel, one that burns ferociously with the great twinned fires of country and city that constitute America. Its opening pages are among the most striking I’ve read in recent years but so are its last. May this hard, beautiful story find the many new readers it deserves

    Laird Hunt

  • It is a legitimate tragedy, our most unpretentious American masterpiece

    Joyce Carol Oates

  • The depth and power and stature of this enormous book are rare indeed in modern fiction

    New York Times

About the Author

Harriette Arnow

Harriette Arnow was an American teacher, novelist, social historian and essayist, celebrated for her works on the populations of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. She was born into a family of teachers in 1908 and after studying at the University of Louisville taught for two years in a school in rural Pulaski County. These experiences provided the basis for her first novel, Mountain Path. After spending time in Cincinnati and Kentucky, Arnow moved with her husband and two children to a farm in Michigan. It was there that she wrote The Dollmaker in 1954, a book that would become a landmark in American fiction. It was at that same farm that she died in 1984.

Harriette Arnow

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Features

5 reasons you should read Harriette Arnow's lost masterpiece, The Dollmaker

First published in 1954, The Dollmaker spent 31 weeks in the New York Times bestseller chart. For all that, it is little known in the UK. Here are five short passages that show off Arnow’s brilliance.

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