The Home-Maker

Although this novel first appeared in 1924, it deals in an amazingly contemporary manner with the problems of a family in which both husband and wife are oppressed and frustrated by the roles that they are expected to play. Evangeline Knapp is the perfect, compulsive housekeeper, while her husband, Lester, is a poet and a dreamer. Suddenly, through a nearly fatal accident, their roles are reversed: Lester is confined to home in a wheelchair and his wife must work to support the family. The changes that take place between husband and wife and particularly between parents and children are both fascinating and poignant. The characters are brought to life in a vivid, compelling way in this powerful novel that is far more relevant now than when it was published.

Named by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the ten most influential women in the US, Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879 - 1958) brought the Montessori Method of child-rearing to America, presided over the country's first adult education program, and influenced American literary tastes as a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee from 1926 to 1951. A committed educational reformer and social activist, the popular Arlington, VT writer produced 22 works of fiction and 18 nonfiction books on a wide range of subjects. Mark J. Madigan, who provides an introduction, teaches English at the University of Vermont and is editor of Fisher's The Bedquilt and Other Stories (1995) and Keeping Fires Night and Day: Selected Letters of Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1993).