The Trees (novel)

The Trees

First edition
Author	Conrad Richter
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	1940
Published in English	March 1, 1940
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Followed by	The Fields, The Town

The Trees, the first novel of Conrad Richter's trilogy The Awakening Land, is set in the wilderness of central Ohio (c. 1795). The simple plot — composed of what are essentially episodes in the life of a pioneer family before the virgin hardwood forest was cut down — is told in a third-person narration rich with folklore and suggestive of early backwoods speech. The central character is Sayward Luckett, the eldest daughter in a family who the narrator says "followed the woods as some families follow the sea." The book was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1940. The Trees was followed by The Fields (1946) and The Town (1950). A single-volume trilogy was published in 1966.

Worth Luckett is a "woodsy" who provides for his family by hunting wild animals for food and trading their pelts for other commodities they need. When Worth notices that the wild game is leaving the woods near their settlement in Pennsylvania, he convinces his wife and family to move to where the animal population is more plentiful. They migrate into the Ohio Valley, in the fictional county of Shawanee, where they construct a log cabin. They are soon joined by other settlers, who form the beginnings of a community.

The Lucketts suffer painful losses and hardships during their first few years in the Ohio Valley. Worth's wife, Jary, who was suffering from consumption during the journey, soon dies. The family survives disease, possibly typhoid fever. The youngest child, Sulie, becomes lost in the deep woods; unable to find her, the family gives her up as either dead or taken captive by the Lenape Indians. A grief-stricken Worth abandons his other children to search for her. The second daughter, Genny, marries a neighboring settler. Her husband later runs off with her younger sister, Achsa, causing Genny to suffer a temporary nervous breakdown.

Throughout all of this, the oldest daughter, Sayward, holds the remaining family together. She assumes all responsibility for her younger siblings. Sayward marries a settler named Portius Wheeler, a lawyer known as "The Solitary." He has migrated from Massachusetts, for unstated reasons. The marriage of Sayward and Portius ultimately appears to be successful. At the book's conclusion, the couple has begun to clear the land of trees surrounding the cabin, in order to plant crops. Portius has come out of his shell and begun practicing law again; and Sayward is expecting their first child.