The Trees by Conrad Richter

The Trees

By Conrad Richter

The Trees is a moving novel of the beginning of the American trek to the west. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here, in the first novel of Conrad Richter’s Awakening Land Trilogy, the Lucketts, a wild, woods-faring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation. This novel gives an excellent feel for America’s lost woods culture, which was created when most of the eastern Midwest was a vast hardwood forest – virtually a jungle. The Trees conveys settler life, including conflicts with Native Americans, illness, hunting, family dynamics, and marriage.

 This description makes you must want to pick up this book and devour it. I love stories about the settling of America so I thought this would be fantastic. I am sad to say this was not the case. I was lost in the beginning trying to figure out who the characters were and where they fit into this crazy family.  One in particular is called by a nickname sometimes but there was no reference that it was a nickname so I thought it was another character. I finally figured it out when I was very confused by the story in places. It was hard to keep track at first what was really happening.  I am not confused easily either. I love a complicated story if it is written well. I don’t think that this was written well enough to get engrossed with any of the characters let alone the main character. You don’t even figure out who that is until very late in the book. It took me about ¾ of the way into the book to really care about any of them.

So that being said I know this is deemed a classic novel but I only give it 2 stars.