About this ebook
Set among Scottish Presbyterian homesteaders on the Iowa prairie during the Civil War, The Able McLaughlins follows Wully McLaughlin and Christie McNair as a private calamity collides with public codes of honor. Wilson's prose is spare and exacting; its regional realism is tempered by tender domestic detail and moral intensity. In the lineage of Midwestern regionalists such as Willa Cather and Hamlin Garland, the novel probes secrecy, justice, and communal belonging, earning the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for its clear-eyed portrait of immigrant endurance and covenant faith. Margaret Wilson, an Iowa-born writer steeped in Presbyterian discipline and the stories of Scottish settler families, channels intimate knowledge of church governance, kinship, and prairie labor into her narrative. Drawing on oral history and local memory, and on a keen eye for social ethics, she shapes a drama that feels both ethnographic and unsentimentally humane. The novel's authority springs from lived textures rather than polemic, a craft she extended in the sequel, The Law and the McLaughlins. Recommended to readers of Cather and Garland, to scholars of immigration, gender, and religion, and to anyone seeking a taut, humane pioneer saga, The Able McLaughlins rewards with moral complexity, historical texture, and quietly luminous prose. Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.
Set among Scottish Presbyterian homesteaders on the Iowa prairie during the Civil War, The Able McLaughlins follows Wully McLaughlin and Christie McNair as a private calamity collides with public codes of honor. Wilson's prose is spare and exacting; its regional realism is tempered by tender dome...
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About the author
Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson (1882-1973) was an American novelist awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for "The Able McLaughlins". She attended the University of Chicago. After completing her education, she became a missionary in the service of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. While assigned to the Punjab region of India, she worked at a girls' school and at a hospital. She returned to the U.S. in 1910 because of illness and resigned from her position as a missionary in 1916. The themes found throughout her writings include the secondary status of women and the role of religion. Two of her novels draw on her experiences in India. When she won a $2,000 prize offered by Harper & Brothers in 1923, her name was unknown because she had signed her short stories in Harper's Magazine "An Elderly Spinster." Her work is of interest in part for its exploration of feminist issues in a domestic context set against a background of an unsympathetic judicial system.
Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson (1882-1973) was an American novelist awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for "The Able McLaughlins". She attended the University of Chicago. After completing her education, she became a missionary in the service of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. While assi...
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