Augusta Receives Kirkus Review!
In this novel inspired by the challenging life of the author’s grandmother, a woman is left to raise her four children alone during the 1920s.
Augusta Young is born “near the turn of the twentieth century” to a hardscrabble Arkansas farm family. At the age of 12, entering the eighth grade—the only one of her siblings allowed to remain in school this long—she is excited about receiving her diploma at the end of the term. But there is an unanticipated upheaval ahead for her. The mother of her best friend, Clara “Cookie” Church, has taken ill. Shortly after the graduation celebration, Augusta begins helping Cookie’s family, taking on the household chores Betty Church can no longer handle. When Betty dies, Augusta’s parents marry off their 13-year-old daughter to Cookie’s newly widowed father, Simon. Despite Augusta’s objections, the deal is set. Initially, Augusta finds Simon to be a caring and devoted husband. For the first time, she has store-bought clothes and ample food—until the price of cotton crashes. At 15, Augusta is pregnant and forced to move to Detroit with Simon. Poverty stricken, they take up residence in a two-room tenement apartment. Over the next 15 years, Augusta confronts overwhelming obstacles, ultimately struggling to support her four children on a food server’s salary after Simon leaves her and the kids. The depth of her travails—and the heart of the engaging story—is revealed in Ryker’s haunting first chapter, where readers are introduced to a 20-something Augusta walking the streets of Detroit. She is hoping to get a glimpse of her fourth child, the little girl she gave up for adoption so that she could keep the other three. The bulk of the novel fills in the blanks of how she arrived at this shattering moment. Smooth-flowing prose carries the tale forward at a steady pace, although without any year markers, it is sometimes difficult to tell how much time has passed between chapters. Nonetheless, farm and city vignettes create vivid images of time, place, and economic class, and Augusta emerges as a formidable woman in the face of daunting odds.
A historically evocative period drama that’s poignant and disquieting.