The saddest book ever... this is the story of a poor family that just got more and more poor. The author's use of imagery helps the reader feel the descriptions of the Earth, the skinny children, the despair of poverty and hopelessness... first, working in the coal tunnels, and the father getting much of his pay in scrip for the company store. Then, tenant farming and the owner taking everything he harvested, yet still he owes...on to the slaughterhouse work he considers himself lucky to get. The air in the town is so stifling from the slaughterhouse and Benjy has asthma and can't breathe.... Things get worse and worse, and the story remains unfinished, but the reader can imagine the ragged end of this family, during the depression that beat them further and further down. ( )

Set in the American Great Depression, this short novel is the story of a family caught in a downward economic spiral. Jim Holbrook works in a Wyoming mine while Anna cares for their two small children, Mazie and Will. There is never enough money to meet their basic needs, and they live in constant fear of an accident that will leave Jim incapacitated, or worse. They decide to leave in search of a better livelihood, but this proves elusive. Meanwhile Anna seems to be perpetually pregnant, and the children attend school so infrequently they fail to make progress. It’s all quite bleak.

Tillie Olsen began writing this novel during the Depression, and effectively captured the despair and exhaustion that affected so many during that time. She set the work aside after four chapters and returned to it many years later, piecing together previous drafts and other fragments in an attempt to create a cohesive whole. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work. There are too many gaps, too little character development, and the ending is abrupt and inconclusive. ( )

Depressing story and tiresomely affected writing style. ( )

"Yonnondio follows the heartbreaking path of the Holbrook family in the late 1920s and the Great Depression as they move from the coal mines of Wyoming to a tenant farm in Western Nebraska, ending up finally on the killing floors of the slaughterhouses and in the wretched neighborhoods of the poor in Omaha, Nebraska. Mazie, the oldest daughter in the growing family of Jim and Anna Holbrook, tells the story of the family's desire for a better life--Anna's dream that her children be educated and Jim's wish for a life lived out in the open, away from the darkness and danger of the mines. At every turn in their journey, however, their dreams are frustrated, and the family is jeopardized by cruel and indifferent systems."--Publisher's description on back cover.

very depressing story ( )