The Awakening Land trilogy traces the transformation of a middle-American
landscape from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial
civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The trilogy earned author
Conrad Richter immense acclaim, ranking him with the greatest of American
mid-century novelists. It includes The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The
Town (1950) and follows the varied fortunes of Sayward Luckett and her family in
southeastern Ohio.
The Fields tells the story of Sayward as a wife and mother, working with her own
brood on that hard frontier to create a durable home, and aspects of
civilization in a region where life is