The Dollmaker
Gertie Nevels is a strong, self-reliant farmwife in the Kentucky hills during World War II, whittling dolls and crucifixes from cherry wood and dreaming of owning her own piece of land. When her husband Clovis takes a factory job in wartime Detroit, Gertie is forced to pack up their five children and follow him into a housing project of prefab walls, ration lines, and unfamiliar neighbors from every corner of Appalachia and the South. The move is gradual, grinding devastation: the land slips further from reach, the children are pulled apart by the city, and the carving that once sustained her becomes a commodity she cannot afford to protect. Harriette Simpson Arnow's 1954 novel is a landmark of American working-class fiction and one of the great, under-read novels of twentieth-century migration.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Dollmaker
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Gertie Nevels can carve cherrywood and birth a calf in a Kentucky storm. When her husband takes a job at a Detroit war plant, she follows with the children to a cramped public-housing project that grinds at all of them.
The Dollmaker was written by Harriette Simpson Arnow and published in 1954. It is widely considered one of the great American novels of mid-20th-century working-class life and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
The Dollmaker is around 600 pages and uses Kentucky Appalachian dialect for the protagonist Gertie Nevels and her family. The voice takes adjustment but is widely admired. Most readers find it deeply rewarding.
The Dollmaker is 608 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Dollmaker takes most readers 9 to 13 hours to finish.
The Dollmaker is a standalone novel by Harriette Simpson Arnow, not part of a series.
The Dollmaker is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.