The Runaway

"Now this just isn't- Mrs. Klein you don't- you can't. I know you love it here but you're not being clear. I mean with the death and all, and the little ones. But think about it. Think of the numbers." He pointed at her brown account book and wearily took off his glasses. "Your family is just scratching, just scratching along. The families before you had the same troubles. They were hard workers too, but the land isn't rich, not like what's surrounding you: too many rocks, too steep of a grade. I may not own this place but I reckon I've worked here longer than anybody else has, probably since the Indians gave it up. I say you've had bum luck in picking your business. And now without a man--"

It is turn of the century America in Upstate New York. In the fertile lands of the region a new widow with three young children must run their farm alone, defying sexual expectations of the time. From this seed the Klein family's story branches into a journey of growth that touches, sometimes violently, their community, with its servants, wealthy landowners, and farmers, eventually bringing them into the larger world of the city with its tenement slums, and mansions, immigrants, and laborers. The Runaway is a tightly knit study of a time when economic, racial, and sexual mores experienced a radical revolution, as well as a moving piece on human relations, as illuminating to the present day as it is to the past.