The Field House

A Writer's Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine

The Field House
Robin Clifford Wood
RRP:
NZ$ 36.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 31.44
Paperback
h216 x 140mm - 400pg
20 May 2021 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9781647420451
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Born of illustrious New England stock, Rachel Field was a National Book Award-winning novelist, a Newbery Medal-winning children' s writer, a poet, playwright, and rising Hollywood success in the early twentieth century. Her light was abruptly extinguished at the age of forty-seven, when she died at the pinnacle of her personal happiness and professional acclaim. Fifty years later, Robin Clifford Wood stepped onto the sagging floorboards of Rachel' s long-neglected home on the rugged shores of an island in Maine and began dredging up Rachel' s history. She was determined to answer the questions that filled the house' s every crevice: Who was this vibrant, talented artist whose very name entrances those who still remember her work? Why is that work-so richly remunerated and widely celebrated in her lifetime-so largely forgotten today? The journey into Rachel' s world took Wood further than she ever dreamed possible, unveiling a life fraught with challenge, and buried by tragedy, and yet incandescent with joy. The Field House is a book about beauty-beauty in Maine island landscapes, in friendship, love, and heartbreak; beauty hidden beneath a woman' s woefully unbeautiful exterior; beauty in a rare, delightful spirit that still whispers from the past. Just listen.
"[Wood' s] passionate prose and carefully curated primary sources will certainly convince readers that Field is not a writer to overlook. " --Kirkus Reviews"I just finished this lovely book and feel richer for it. Meticulously researched and deeply felt, The Field House is a compelling hybrid of biography and memoir. An exploration of the life and legacy of novelist-poet Rachel Field, it is interwoven with personal reflections that reveal the influence of Field' s work ethic and passion on the biographer' s life. This book is also a meditation on the nature of creativity and a love letter to a house on Sutton Island in Maine once owned by Field and now by Wood. For both writers, the house became a touchstone and a haven, a place to reflect and rejuvenate and create. " --#1 New York Times best-selling author Christina Baker Kline "The Field House lures readers to ' a long-abandoned, wood-framed house on an island off the coast of Maine. ' When author Robin Clifford Wood buys a summer cottage belonging to famed poet and award-winning author Rachel Field, Wood is haunted by Field' s sudden death, her untold stories. Discovering treasures and clues Field left behind, Wood weaves a stunning and intimate portrait of a once-prized American writer and poet who deserves to be remembered. " --Barbara Walsh, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of August Gale: A Father and Daughter' s Journey into the Storm and Sammy in the Sky"Robin Clifford Wood' s biography of Rachel Field is a beautiful and thorough history of an artist and writer with important connections to Maine. In The Field House, Wood doesn' t back away from the complexity of Field' s life: self-doubt, aspirations, flaws, triumphs, unrequited loves, and final losses. And yet this book is also a clear-eyed survey of the literary world of the 1920s and ' 30s, Maine island life, and a woman who, transcending gender roles and notions of physical beauty, offered the world a gift that, because of Wood' s deeply personal book, will hopefully never be forgotten. " --Jaed Coffin, author of Roughhouse Friday and A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants"I highly recommend Wood' s enchanting The Field House, her intensely personal reckoning with the life and work of the nearly forgotten author Rachel Field . . . Field left plenty of evidence for her biographer to explore--in archives across the country, and in the Maine island cottage they both called home in a curious twist of fate that enabled this charming and heartfelt narrative. " --Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast"This elegant hybrid of biography and memoir introduced me to Rachel Field and Robin Clifford Wood, whose lives, separated by generations, uncannily twine. Compelling, instructive, inspiring, and beautifully written. I was greatly moved. " --Monica Wood, award-winning author of The One-in-a-million Boy, When We Were the Kennedys, and Any Bitter Thing"Robin Clifford Wood has combined immense archival material and keen insights to create a detailed and enchanting biography of Rachel Field. The author' s skillful use of granular sources, paired with her sophisticated wordsmithing, has produced a book that is both informative and lyrical. Readers will also appreciate the author' s parallel discussion of the writing process itself--an articulate discussion that will undoubtedly seem familiar to anyone who has ever struggled to discover and tell a story. This is a delight to read. " --historian Jacalyn Eddy, author of Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children' s Book Publishing, 1919-1939"This fascinating book about the life of Newbery Medal-winning author Rachel Field lives at the intersection of seamless research and rich personal reflection. Wood offers such insightful, knowing details about Field' s writing life and her personal attachment to Maine, that we come to feel we are reading the account of a close friend. Wonderfully executed, The Field House renders Field' s extraordinary life with great empathy and beautiful, lucid prose. " --Susan Conley, critically acclaimed author of Landslide, Elsey Come Home, The Foremost Good Fortune, and Paris Was the Place"This wonderful book--based on meticulously thorough, devoted research--is a lovingly tender, wise, and judicious account of Rachel Field and her world. Its unusual blend of memoir and biography helps to illuminate the life, even as a poignant dialogue between the author and her subject unfolds. Truly, a tour-de-force!" --Benson Bobrick, award-winning author of Angel in the Whirlwind and Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired
Robin Clifford Wood has a BA from Yale University, an MA in English from the University of Rochester, and an MFA in creative writing from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. During twenty-five years as a full-time mom, she published local human-interest features in New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts and spent seven years as a regular columnist, first in Massachusetts, then for Maine' s Bangor Daily News. She began teaching college writing in 2015. Her articles have appeared in Port City Life magazine, Bangor Metro, and Solstice literary magazine, which published her powerful essay "How Do You Help Your Parents Die? " in its spring 2019 issue. For more information, visit www. robincliffordwood. com. Wood lives in central Maine with her husband and dogs. The Field House is her first book.
Status: No local stock, title imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781647420451
Published: 20 May 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: She Writes Press
Publisher: She Writes Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 216mm
Width: 140mm
Pages: 400

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