A Free, Unsullied Land, by Maggie Kast
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A Free, Unsullied Land, by Maggie Kast
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Henriette Greenberg is one of the most captivating and compelling characters I’ve encountered in years. A woman who wants to “invent culture from scratch,” she dives into leftist causes, travels to Alabama to protest the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys, studies Apache culture in New Mexico, and struggles with her damaged sexuality through psychoanalysis and one-night stands that haunt her relationship with the man she truly loves. At one point in the novel, Henriette tells her lover, “You should know who I am.” Reader, you should too. —David Jauss, author of Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories, Black Maps, Crimes of Passion and On Writing Fiction
A Free, Unsullied Land, by Maggie Kast - Amazon Sales Rank: #1766851 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-11-01
- Released on: 2015-11-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
A Free, Unsullied Land, by Maggie Kast Review A Free, Unsullied Land is a wonderfully engaging and convincing portrait of a young woman elbowing her way past the limits of her moment in history. When she finally breathes the fresh air of political and sexual revolt, she still must learn some bracing lessons that transcend both. Maggie Kast has a terrific ear for speech and a sharp eye for the differences and similarities between depression-era and contemporary lives. Her energetic novel holds us riveted on the cusp between. --Rosellen Brown, author of Tender Mercies and Before and AfterMaggie Kast s searching, intelligent novel is a page-turner. Few novels have so powerfully evoked the longing -- and the hope -- of individuals at the juncture in which their culture s delusions are crumbling. In the most surprising and most wonderful ways, it is an epic novel. --Kevin McIlvoy, author of 58 Octaves Below Middle C, The Complete History of New Mexico: Stories, Hyssop, Little Peg, The Fifth StationThrough Kast s descriptive powers and her creation of the brilliant and thwarted Henriette, a young woman s striving to realize herself is as magical and terrifying as Alice s adventures in wonderland. --Sharon Solwitz, author of Blood and Milk and Bloody Mary
About the Author Maggie Kast is the author of The Crack between the Worlds: a dancer's memoir of loss, faith and family, a chapter of which won a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council and a Pushcart nomination.
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. "A Free, Unsullied Land" isn't a romance. By Starr Review The world of Maggie Kast's 2015 novel, A Free, Unsullied Land is not a place where many of us pick up a novel to go. Everything about this book surprises by it's unvarnished and fresh realism.The novel opens in 1927 in the wide world and in the Greenberg household simultaneously. The protagonist, Henriette Greenberg, is the daughter of Jewish parents who have adopted Unitarianism, the better to live the dream of leafy suburban Oak Park, Illinois. By 1930, Henriette, weary of playing second fiddle to twin brothers explicitly preferred by their parents; tired of her controlling, conventional mother; and sickened by her father's secret, prurient interest in her body, will be more than ready for freedom when she enrolls at the University of Chicago, hoping to escape from her stultifying family.At the opening, Kast presents the Sacco and Vanzetti trial as a way to show the deep emotional effect it has on Henriette as a girl. We find that her consciousness is much broader and more sophisticated than we expect a teen-aged heroine's to be. "As she entered adolescence she felt energized to protest. Her favorite poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts…Henriette read the papers and learned about the IWW, International Workers of the World, a leader of the movement to free the two men. She rolled the organization's nickname around in her mouth, 'Wobbly, wobbly,' and read about anarchists and Bolsheviks."Hyde Park, home of the University, is the dream opposite of Henriette's life in staid Oak Park. She studies poetry and is fascinated by anthropology—and by her T.A., Dilly Brannigan, who becomes her lover. Her brother Carl, a medical student, helps introduce her to the the fast life of jazz, leftist ideas, and interracial milieux. He also introduces her to a friend who rapes her, deepening the sexual trauma her father has already inflicted.To give a precis of the novel's direction, though, doesn't give a glimmer of the author's ambition in telling the story of Henriette's passage from an intellectually advanced girl stumbling toward some undefined wish for more in life, to a young women satisfied that she has found her emotional direction, avocation in art, and—with the help of analysis—some resolution to her sexual dysfunction. Kast manages to portray Henriette from beginning to end as the work in process that youth has to be, sparing the reader neither the of the heights nor the sloughs nor the carnal necessities that our protagonist must experience in the development of judgment, purpose, and identity.Kast allows her characters' mistakes to appear without comment and for the characters to live with the consequences--often unresolved--of their actions. As a result of this unsentimental authorial approach, readers' reactions to Henriette are sure to wax and wane. While in a committed relationship with Dilly, she sleeps with another man and suffers the guilt she brings on herself. Her romantic commitment to leftist/Communist ideals lead her to undertake ill-conceived risks. She travels unannounced, alone, and unplanned to Scottsboro, Alabama during the protests over the trials of the so-called Black rapist. She ends up in jail and returns to Chicago in disillusionment, frightened to tell anyone what she's done: "No way could she stand up against spit, hands that wrote death threats, or marauding mobs. On the ground, mouth filled with grit, she'd cared only about saving her own skin." No way she could take responsibility for her own actions when she returns, and it leaves a sour taste in our mouths. We want her to be a heroine, but she just wants to suppress the episode. Though she helps a friend while she's in Scottsboro, the trip is a jejune excursion, not a courageous civil rights action. We are the ones who have to look at it realistically: She's no heroine, but a girl who put herself in danger.This gives a clue about why we are able to live with the slow growth of Henriette's judgment even when, as an anthropology researcher on an Apache reservation toward the satisfactory conclusion, she shockingly betrays an ancient taboo.Because Kast provides such rich detail about a period of great social ferment, she reinforces the challenges Henriette faces in getting her moral bearings. Kast shows us a world in which nearly every aspect of life is in upheaval. It's not by accident that she set her novel when she did: The economic depression; questioning of the limitations on women; the loosening sexual mores—and the confusion all of these brought—had to make it difficult to feel certain in one's judgment about many things. And of course it's not hard to relate to from 2016.Kast gracefully includes details that could go so badly or seem so intrusive, but which give this book a presence unlike any other. The lives of the characters are made real by what is usually left off the page. Characters ask each other if they have their birth control apparatus. Henriette's devotion to her psychoanalysis is followed throughout the book and is made to appear neither silly nor like the ultimate solution to her troubles nor only reason for her growth.Most surprising of all, the setting for the two major characters is an elite academic department of anthropology, in which they are both specializing in Native American archaeology and ethnography. Each does field work. Kast presents this as comfortably, fluently, and unflinchingly as another novelist would present a weekend at the lake cottage. It's a rarefied world that most readers know little of, but Kast's authority is natural and we read it without a hitch or question.During the first half of the 1930's, Kast's characters are encountering homosexuality, and unabashed racial mingling of both sexes which are clearly not far from being completely taboo. I appreciate, again, the straightforward way the author deals with these themes and details. She does not introduce anachronistic attitudes, but leaves characters testing their own feelings about them, wishing to be generous, and sometimes not sure how far they can let themselves go in abetting different lifestyles.A Free, Unsullied Land isn't a novel that I read in one sitting. I wouldn't recommend that anyone try: It's much too interesting. Because all the elements are unusual—the characters; their settings; their ambitions; their values and how those lead them to solve the problems of their lives; the historical moment and how its many social, intellectual, and political issues resonate in the story—there is much to consider and digest. For me this was a slow read with plenty of pauses that has yielded rich rewards. The characters and themes really stick. I know, however, that I'm going back in. A book this substantial and unusual clearly has much more for me to discover.--Ann Starr, Starr Review (http://starr-review.blogspot.com), Jan 12, 2016
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. This novel set in 1930s Chicago will inspire further research By Amazon Customer Henriette Greenberg is a college student in 1930s Chicago. The novel focuses on her relationship with her parents and with anthropology Master's student Dilly Brannigan, her struggles to understand herself, and her radical political involvement. At one point she takes a train to Alabama to protest the unfair trial of the Scottsboro Boys and ends up in jail. Later she does anthropology field work on an Apache reservation.There are several unique and interesting aspects of the novel, such as Henriette's family background (her parents are Jews who converted to Unitarianism), differences between her upbringing and that of her boyfriend (e.g. he comes from a small town, where his family farms and hunts; Henriette's parents hate guns in all forms), and Henriette's regular psychotherapy appointments.As you can imagine from her interest in psychoanalysis, Henriette has many issues that she tries to work through. Her emotions and reactions seemed true to life. On the other hand, I was often annoyed by her saucy repartee.A Free, Unsullied Land is divided into three parts and covers the years 1927-1934. I found myself enjoying Parts II and III more than Part I, mainly because the first part of the novel jumped back and forth in time in a confusing manner. I also found that, although the tension in Henriette's family was introduced at the beginning, it was vague and I had trouble sympathizing with her.The main thing I disliked about this novel is that sexuality is a recurring theme. If sex is not something you enjoy focusing on in fiction, you won't want to pick up this book.Finally, I would like to make a few comments about the novel's ending. I really liked that Henriette turned from anthropology to writing, since poetry was her first love. I'm glad that marriage was presented positively, but since Henriette wasn't completely honest about her sexual past it was hard to feel entirely hopeful about her marriage. I also wish Henriette's relationship with her parents were more resolved. Obviously I prefer more closure than the author!Turning now to the historical references in A Free, Unsullied Land, you'll discover them on nearly every page. If you find that historical fiction brings past decades to life before your eyes, you'll probably be intrigued by many aspects of this novel. You could take any one of these topics as a starting point for your own research: Anarchism, College life in the 1930s, Communist Party USA, Execution of Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Freud and psychoanalysis, The Great Depression, The International Labor Defense, The International Workers of the World ("Wobblies"), Jazz, NAACP, Native reservations, The New Masses magazine, Prohibition, The Scottsboro Boys, The study and practice of anthropology.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. This sweeping tale set during the Great Depression will take you on a journey to different ... By Rebecca J. Russell 4.5 stars.This sweeping tale set during the Great Depression will take you on a journey to different areas of the country, through different political persuasions, while exploring nuances of academia, culture, bias and outright prejudice.As the main character, Henriette Greenberg, struggles to learn who she is and wrestles with all the aspects of her psyche, we see her questions echoed in the society of the day. Ms. Kast brilliantly captures the internal emotional battles of one young woman, as well as the clash of opposing forces as our country fought culture wars over so much that still causes turmoil today. Henriette's search for inner peace, healing, personal justice and freedom are mirrored in the lifestyles of African Americans in the South and various Native tribes of the West.Ms. Kast is able to express thought and emotion in both concise and poetic ways, bringing the internal to the surface and piercing right to the core of what makes us human. She writes both dialog and action with a fluidity that pulls the reader along. Though at the beginning I feared getting bogged down by too many references to intellectuals and revolutionaries of the day and their writings, this turned out not to be the case. I was deeply affected by this book and highly recommend it.
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