What a Woman Must Do | 
 enlarge | Author: Faith Sullivan
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 565711
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 1571310371
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781571310378
ASIN: 1571310371
Publication Date: June 15, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: A good copy. Slightly used. Binding is solid and tight. Few creases. Bottom right corners are slightly bent.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Faith Sullivan's thoughtful, slow-moving novel, set in rural Minnesota in 1952, explores the conflicted loyalties of three women: 59-year-old Kate Drew, her dear friend and distant relative, Harriet McCaffery, and Kate's great-niece, Bess, a volatile teenager whom Kate and Harriet have raised from the age of 7 after the car crash that killed Bess's parents. Bess's mother, Celia, had also been orphaned in early childhood and raised by Kate and her husband, Martin. Looking back at Celia's death 10 years ago, Kate regrets not having confronted Celia's surly, hard-drinking husband long before the night that he took Celia's life and his own. Kate had lost her own husband only 8 months earlier and reasoned that putting Archer in his place was a man's job. It turns out to be just the task "that a woman must do," however, and shirking this haunts her for the rest of her life. When the novel opens, Bess is almost grown, and Kate is intent on getting her out of town to a teachers' college in St. Cloud before she "goes bad," certain that her charge will never live down the family scandal and will instead feel compelled to live up to it. "In a little place like Harvester," as even Bess realizes, "the past never became history, but sat side by side with current events, like an old woman pushing in among the young ones, insisting on being part of things." Although Kate feels ready to say good-bye to her Bess, a second parting is threatened. Unexpectedly, her friend Harriet has become involved with a widowed farmer named Devore Weiss. While Kate anticipates a lonely future, she is able to feel happy for Harriet. But Bess, at just 17, views Harriet's new attachment as an abandonment, and shuts off her love for Harriet like the flow from a faucet. In this story of the past's influence on the present, Faith Sullivan returns to the setting and the moral climate of her previous novels The Cape Ann and The Empress of One. The quiet rewards of the Harvester series are not immediate in the first half of What a Woman Must Do, but as the novel unfolds, readers who persist will come to understand Kate, Bess, and Harriet not as conventional country women--stock characters in American prairie fiction--but as individuals, shaped, as we all are, by memory and longing. --Regina Marler
Product Description
Set in the Midwest in 1952, Faith Sullivan’s novel follows the interconnected lives of three women of three generations: Bess, 17, Harriet, 39, and Kate, 59. All have been affected by the death of Bess’s parents in a car accident. As Bess prepares for college, and Harriet for marriage, Great Aunt Kate holds the trio together. In writing knowingly and appreciatively of small-town life, Sullivan, winner of the Milkweed Editions' National Fiction Prize, addresses the universal themes of family, love, and loyalty. “What a Woman Must Do draws the reader in.” — Washington Post Book World
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Plods along August 1, 2007
Gotta Read!
This book does not live up to others written by Faith Sullivan. The story plods along with much repetition as the story moves from viewpoint to viewpoint. I finished reading this short book, but much determination was required!
 Three Women in Search of Life April 3, 2001
Kay Mitchell (Pensacola Beach, Florida United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book takes you back to Depression Minnesota and draws you into a family tragedy that encompasses three women who struggle to live together and to escape the places that fate has placed them in. Kate, the great aunt, who raises her niece's child after a tragic automobile accident takes Bess's parents, does her best for Bess who loves her aunt and clings to her for security and love. Harriet, the middle aged cousin who comes to live with them and serves as Bess's mother dreams of a life and family of her own although Bess is like a daughter to her. Suddenly in the midst of a small town life of stability and order, all three women are thrown into turmoil because of new relationships that occur toward the end of summer one year. Harriet is courted by a kind and dance loving farmer with several children to raise on his own. Bess is thrown with a handsome young man who seeks her out for his own pleasure, and despite her knowledge of his wife and children, finds it hard to resist him. At the same time, Kate is dreaming of her life with her late husband and the farm they both loved and lost in the Depression. Fate brings all these elements to a conclusion that is at once tragic and life affirming. Harriet realizes how much love she has always had to give and is at last free to do so while Bess, reluctant to leave the security of the only home she has ever known not to mention the forbidden fruit that she must forego, is mature enough to recognize that her path is elsewhere for the time being. This is a pleasant book that reveals how normal lives can be exceptional and how even the most ordinary people find happiness and fulfillment in life.
 Over, and over again . . . March 22, 2001
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I can not put this book down. It has become a ritual to read it every few months, before it slips from the memory. I need to check in on the girls, to see what is going on. A perfect read on the relationship between: life, woman and age. Each character is vividly imaginable.
 Luminous and Lyrical February 4, 2001
BritMys (Sandy, UT United States)
This is the first book by Faith Sullivan that I have read, but I will definitely read her previous works. Set in 1952, this story about three distantly related women of three generations was beautifully written. Althought it is ultimately about loss- the loss of parents, the loss of a farm, the loss of a husband and youth, it is well worth reading because it speaks so eloquently to the common feelings women bear and share. I loved this book. I'll definitely recommend it to friends.
My book group loved the book! December 22, 2000
Shirley A. Keltto (Rochester, MN USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
My book group met today to discuss Faith Sullivan's latest book. Two years ago, we were fortunate to have Sullivan as a guest at our meeting, and she was most delightful. We thought we'd be intimidated by having her in our presence because we were going to discuss her book, "The Empress of One." But she was most interested in us as members and wanted to hear our opinions and was open to our questions about the journey of a writer in writing a book. Now on to her newest book. It is wonderful! However, the characters from "Cape Ann" and "Empress of One" are not in this book which disappointed one of our members. An issue that came up today is the whole rural scene about farmers who in the past decades have lost their farms, and what emotional turmoil and stress that causes. Kate, in the book, never did recover from their having to "sell" and move to town. So we felt sad when she died before Harriet was to get married to a farmer who had not lost it all, but was very successful with a 640 acre plot. This book caused us to cry and shed tears, which to me is always therapeutic. I find myself thinking about the characters and the story as I go about my busy days now of getting ready for Christmas. Treat yourself over the Holidays to a good read!
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