This is an extremely important and readable book about two very important working-class writers. It is one of the finest efforts of its kind to begin to help us rediscover and recover working-class literature as well as to renew the importance of class in our national discussion.

A very interesting novel women will want to read and here are 3 short excerpts from the story to convince you: "The hurricane of women is simply moving forward, moving over you, something powerful is moving ... in the hurricane it is said there is the work of workers for centuries, in one hurricane now the world of women rises and the predators can tremble and hide and run and die." "For the women on the Dread Road of this earth, carrying the starved and poisoned children ..." "The earth is not sleeping, she is violated and furious." *Hag - A GOOD word. Read Mary Daly's Gynecology

Having read this book for a course in American Cultural History, I have learned a great deal from Le Sueur. This book offers a wonderful collection of Le Sueur's views on the social, cultural and economic disparities in America during the late 1920s to around the 50s/60s. Brought up among activists and radical groups like the I.W.W., Le Sueur's strong background and active role in reforming America is reflected in Harvest & Song for my time: stories by Meridel Le Sueur. Her stories show the parts of America the school-age student is not usually taught--the truths of a more conformist, racist America. Le Sueur's standpoint in this collection of her stories and essays portray her personal views in an indirect manner. Rather than using literature to express her personal viewpoints, she basically tells her readers what she sees, with an emphasis on the points she is trying to make. The reader is then left to absorb what they have read to form their own views. Anyone interested in reading "real" history of the United States, including the topics of racism, radicalism, and immigrants in America should read and reflect upon this author's work. Meridel Le Sueur does an excellent job of bringing this not so public view of America to light.

I discovered this book when I was living in San Francisco, and it convinced me to move back home to the Midwest. Le Sueur is an earthy, populist writer. This is a history of Minnesota, but its doesn't trouble itself with governors and generals. Le Sueur writes about Indians, farmers, cornhuskers, pioneers, the ordinary people who built the Midwest. And her descriptions of nature and weather are beautiful. She loved people, she loved her native country. If you're from the Midwest, buy this book. You'll either get homesick, or you'll be glad you never left home.

At the end of "The River Road: A Story of Abraham Lincoln," Meridel Le Sueur tells us: "So this is the story of a few months in the life of a boy in the middle country becoming a man--when the sapwood of youth darkened, toughened, under strain and pressure, was fired, made stout and hickory-yielding. Men and nations are made by the firing of such days in their lives."

In 1828 Abraham Lincoln took a flatboat from Indiana, down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. La Sueur takes that journey and makes it a crucible in Lincoln's life. The boy in this story is seventeen years old, chaffing at having to live in a crowded cabin, eager to find out what there is to learn in books and from talking to other men, and eager to get out into the word and make something of himself. This is also the Lincoln coming to terms with deep thoughts on the subject of slavery.

"The River Road" is told in a style that can only be characterized as poetic prose, which rings true even more than Sandberg's celebrated biography. The effect is a portrait of the raw Lincoln who has more in common with the trees he chops down with his ax than with the eloquent orator of Gettysburg. "Much of his history you know," La Sueur tells us, "but you can always as you grow have more knowing, see this great live oak of our history more clearly." I have read dozens of books about Lincoln, and he has never felt more real to me than he does in this compelling wilderness tale. "River Road" was originally published in 1954 and was reprinted by Holy Cow! Press with 1991 woodcuts by Susan Kiefer Hughes.

This book is fabulous! I love Le Sueur's writing, and this is a wonderful introduction. Her writing is so full of energy and vitality. At times it reads like an extended prose poem. Her writing is breathtaking, but it is often overlooked because of her political stance (she was a part of the socialist movement of the 1930's.) I think that there is something vital and alive about her writing that is lacking in the polished pieces of many modern authors.

"Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road" by Meridel Le Sueur is, as the subtitle indicates, "A Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother." Nancy Hanks died when Lincoln was a child living in the wilderness of Indiana. Relatively little is known of Lincoln's family: there is one photograph of his step-mother taken after he was assassinated and another that may or may not be of his father, while Nancy Hanks lies buried in a long forgotten grave somewhere in Indiana. This tale has a real feel for life in the wilderness and there is a poignancy to it as Le Sueur crafts the story of a woman who died young and who could never have imagined that she was setting her little boy on the path to greatness by teaching him to read, write and cipher.

The story is told as something of an argument between the narrator's grandmother and Dennis Hanks, Nancy's cousin. Dennis might have been blood kin, but when Abraham Lincoln was born he inspected the baby and announced he would never amount to much; consequently, anything he has to say on the matter of the life of Nancy Hanks is inherently suspect. It is the grandmother who has always been outraged by the fact that while tales area always told about famous men "no one sings of the women." The Lincolns are their kin are folk that the populist and worker groups Le Sueur wrote about in the 1930's could have understood.

This story is not as powerful as Le Sueur's "The River Road: A Story of Abraham Lincoln," but it is not intended to be. This is a "the strange song of the mother of Abraham Lincoln, the young, the deathless Nancy Hanks"; the other tale tells of the crucible of Lincoln's journey down the Mississippi on a raft to New Orleans. This volume in Le Sueur's Wilderness series was originally published in 1949 and has been reprinted by Holy Cow! Press with 1990 illustrations by Dina Redman. Final note: the photograph of Le Sueur by Judy Olausen on the back cover is one of the more impressive pictures of an author I have seen.