Rebecca, A Maryland Farm Girl
 Diane Leatherman
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Crossing Kansas
  ISBN: 0966586115


Rebecca grows up in rural America in the 1920s & 1930s -- working hard, far from family.

Remember how your grandparents bragged about walking to school barefooted, in the snow, uphill? Well, this slim book backs up their stories.

Back when your grandparents were children, life in rural America was very, very different from today. In part because electricity hadn't yet reached the smaller villages & homes.

Back then, children were necessary & useful members of families & society as a whole. They were expected to do all their chores, & if they didn't, the family would suffer. Milk & eggs wouldn't get to the table, nor heat to the home.

Going to school to learn your letters & your numbers was a luxury many families couldn't afford. Learning to read, write, & think was often considered secondary to running the family business & home.

Girls learnt from their mothers & older sisters. Boys from their fathers & older brothers. Sewing & ploughing; milking & harvesting; hauling water & chopping wood -- most everyone in the country had to run their homes on their own, & their children were vital to their survival. No one then, had machines to do it for them.

When the happy autumn ritual of taking apples from the orchard to the cider press turns ugly & Rebecca's mother is accidentally killed by their horse-drawn wagon. Rebecca's older sister, Geneva, & younger brother Bobby, grandmother, aunties & father are cast into sorrow. Even so, Rebecca knows the chickens still have to be fed, their eggs collected.

Geneva takes over all the tasks their Momma once had done -- cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, washing & ironing. Then there was Momma's funeral up the hill, near Grandma's home. To Rebecca their home becomes sadly empty.

Soon it is time for school, & Rebecca learns to copy the letters of her name. She also learns what the teacher wants, & what games the children play out in the yard. There she shares lunch with a new friend who has a telephone. Rebecca has never used one of those. In the afternoon they sing songs.

Then Geneva gets a beau & before everyone knows it, she leaves to get married, & their home gets even emptier. Rebecca tries to do all the chores, except she hasn't really been watching her Momma or Geneva, & when she boils her father's denim workclothes in the laundry cauldron before washing the whites & her school dress, she is cast down with sadness.

When Bobby goes to stay with Geneva & her husband, & doesn't want to come back, Rebecca becomes fiercely lonely at home, finding comfort only at school.

Then, Aunt Eva comes to take her away to the city & from there to another relative's farm. That's where Rebecca stays, working for the Vandenbergs, helping in the house, & learning to milk the small herd of cows every morning & evening.

One day Rebecca is reading the Sears catalog & sees a dress for school that she likes. Mrs. V says she can earn some money by picking beans in a neighbor's fields. After doing her chores, next morning Rebecca sets out, & is hired at 10 cents a bushel. There in the bean fields, she meets a new friend.

Does Rebecca earn enough money to buy that dress? Will she have to quit school when she can't get all her chores done & run down that long road to catch the school bus in time?

Now, some will think Rebecca's story a sad one, about a hard life of all work & no play. That her childhood was cut short by tragedy. Don't be sad for this enduring, hardworking girl, for she has long since gotten over it, & has thrived & lived a very good life.

Rather, celebrate the strength of character adversity brings; the satisfaction a job well done gives; how the modesty of possessions creates an appetite for the ordinary things in life.

While this book may have only 67 pages of lean, unfrilly writing, it is a treasure trove of memories, struggles & victories one child from another time experienced, & in reading it, your own life will be immeasurably enriched.

Rebecca, A Maryland Farm Girl is a gripping little tale, & a true one. In the Epilogue, the author, Diane Leatherman tells us how she met Rebecca at her farmhouse, when she was in her seventies, how after the midday dinner dishes were all put away, she would tell Diane her story.

Raya Bodnarchuk's illustrations are elegant & evocative, & far too few!

Diane Leatherman lives in Maryland where she has been a park ranger, teacher & freelance writer. She has also worked on an “eighteenth century” farm.
(10/27/02)

Rebecca