Homestead, by Rosina Lippi (Boston : A Mariner Book, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999)
"Rosenau, the setting of Homestead, is an amalgam of many of the villages of the Bregenz Forest in Voralberg, Austria's westernmost province." -- from "Author's Note" in Homestead
Twelve interlinking stories span the years between 1909 and 1977. Based on the four years Rosina Lippi spent "in the Bregenz Forest, first going to college and teaching, then collecting data for a study of the incredibly beautiful and challenging dialect spoken there..spend[ing] many hours talking to women of all ages," readers are moved into the lives and landscape of women in three different clans. Through their stories, we learn about life in this westernmost province of Austria. Husbands, children, lovers, farm and village life, the mountain landscape, seasons, the devastating intrusion of two world wars, the ties between generations, and so much more, enlighten minds and touch hearts. Homestead is a beautifully written book, one that brings a tiny corner of the world into readers's hands, while also tugging at our own connections with place and family history.
Homestead deservedly won both the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
The mountains are shimmering with autumn. There are great rustlings of color, brighter this year than for many years past. The sky clutches, ready to give way to winter; any time now my sister and her family will drive the livestock down from fall pasture at Gunta Steeple and back to the homestead at Bent Elbow. Then my nephews will return to my classroom, and at recess Laura will have to make room at Godmother's knee for one or two or all five at once. The children sit with Hanna because she is a natural-borm storyteller. Her secret, I have observed, is that she does not give her stories away cheaply. She makes those children earn them; she doles them out like the treasures they are." -- from Homestead, by Rosina Lippi
Related Websites
Reading Group Guide
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/homestead-author.asp
Bregenzerwald
http://www.bregenzerwald.at/frameset_en.asp
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