'A terrifying lesson in US history – and a haunting tragedy' Guardian

Gertie is the young mother of five children – uneducated, determined, strong. Her only ambition is to own her own small farm in the Kentucky hills where she lives, to become self-sufficient and free.

Whenever the struggle to live off the land eases, her inarticulate imagination takes its freedom and flies. Because Gertie is also an artist, a sculptor of wood and creator of beautiful handmade dolls.

When the family is forced to move to industrial Detroit, with its pre-fab houses, appliances bought on credit and neighbours on every side, life turns into an incomprehensible, lonely nightmare. Gertie realises she must adapt to a life where land, family and creativity are replaced by just one thing: the constant need for money.

‘A masterwork… A superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness’ New York Times

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

A masterwork...A superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness * New York Times *
A book of biblical intensity... With vivid insights into racial, religious and labour tensions, this is a terrifying lesson in US history – and a haunting tragedy * Guardian *
An extraordinary novel, one that burns ferociously with the great twinned fires of country and city that constitute America. Its opening pages are among the most striking I’ve read in recent years but so are its last. May this hard, beautiful story find the many new readers it deserves -- Laird Hunt
It is a legitimate tragedy, our most unpretentious American masterpiece -- Joyce Carol Oates
The depth and power and stature of this enormous book are rare indeed in modern fiction * New York Times *
As engrossing as it is moving * Mail on Sunday *
A novel about social determinism, about the way that conformity and adaptation push against individualism… The Dollmaker has power and poignancy. -- Sarah Churchwell * New Statesman *
The Dollmaker has vividness and terrific reality. It is a book to make one think...a story of the strength of the human heart against bitter odds... Deeply sincere and moving * Chicago Tribune *
A heart-rending documentation of a turbulent time in American history. High time it was rediscovered * Tablet *
The Dollmaker's depiction of family life - the entangled bonds between parents and children, brothers and sisters - is unparalleled in modern fiction * Georgia Review *

Harriette Arnow was an American teacher, novelist, social historian and essayist, celebrated for her works on the populations of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. She was born into a family of teachers in 1908 and after studying at the University of Louisville taught for two years in a school in rural Pulaski County. These experiences provided the basis for her first novel, Mountain Path. After spending time in Cincinnati and Kentucky, Arnow moved with her husband and two children to a farm in Michigan. It was there that she wrote The Dollmaker in 1954, a book that would become a landmark in American fiction. It was at that same farm that she died in 1984.