The Folks

Ruth Suckow

Feb 1992 · University of Iowa Press

About this ebook

Here is an introspective, poignant portrait of an American family during a time of sweeping changes. Now nearly sixty years after it first appeared, Suckow's finest work still displays a thorough realism in its characters' actions and aspirations; the uneasy compromises they are forced to make still ring true.

Suckow's talent for retrospective analysis comes to life as she examines her own people—Iowans, descendants of early settlers—through the lives of the Ferguson family, living in the fictional small town of Belmond, Iowa. Using her gift of creating three-dimensional, living characters, Suckow focuses on personal differences within the family and each member's separate struggle to make sense of past and present, to confront a pervasive sense of loss as a way of life disappears.

About the author

Ruth Suckow (1892-1960) grew up in rural Iowa as the daughter of a Congregationalist minister. She studied at Grinnell College and at the University of Denver. She traveled throughout the U.S., living and writing in Greenwich Village, at Robert Frost’s home, at the Yaddo writing community in New York, and at her farm in Earlville, Iowa.