I picked this up because I'm trying to read all the Pulitzer winners. I didn't realize this was 3rd in a trilogy, Awakening Land. Now I'm going to go back and read The Trees and The Fields. I don't really have a clever review, or anything more to say beyond what the other reviewers have said already, but I do love this quote from another reviewer,
" It also serves as a reminder that clever literary devices are not required to qualify for literary status. This is powerful writing on a simple canvas. And that style is so appropriate for the story that it tells." ( )

Good conclusion but kind of an unexpected focus on Chancey, the last son of Sayward. I put off reading this trilogy for many years. Should have read it sooner. Worthwhile. ( )

When we rejoin Sayward she is in her late forties and has given birth to ten children. Nine have survived. She is witness to the transformation of the wilderness into a civilized community but she can remember when she started her young life in the deep woods of Ohio with trees all around. In awe she watches as the necessities of a communal existence blossom into a church, school, meeting house, and grist mill. The canal becomes a focal point as brick structures replace wooden ones. She can remember when it all started - her family looking to stave off hunger by pushing west in the hopes of cultivating richer soils into bountiful gardens. The Trees told of isolation while The Fields saw settlements encroaching on the family's privacy until finally they realized the need for one another was a good thing and the Town is born.
Even though most of Sayward's children are grown with families of their own, in The Town the reader spends the majority of time with Sayward's youngest child, Chancey. He is a strange child, afraid of everything; paranoid and preferring to be alone. He is so dissimilar to his siblings he strongly believes he is adopted. His failure to understand any member of his family is borderline obsessive. When meeting strangers he even gives them a false name. His claims his weak heart doesn't allow him to walk very far. Soon a dark family secret turns out to be his greatest heartbreak. ( )

I looked forward to [b:The Town|8253|Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7)|Laura Ingalls Wilder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449674l/8253._SX50_.jpg|2299540], the culmination of The Awakening Land trilogy, as I would to a phenomenal dessert at the end of a great dinner. This trilogy has been one of my most memorable reading experiences and Sayward one of the most memorable characters I have met in a novel. Initially [b:The Town|8253|Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7)|Laura Ingalls Wilder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449674l/8253._SX50_.jpg|2299540] did not grab me the way the first two books did. I was expecting more Sayward and to [a:Conrad Richter|8559|Conrad Richter|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1422278594p2/8559.jpg]'s credit, he surprised me and impressed me by not taking the obvious approach. Much of [b:The Town|8253|Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7)|Laura Ingalls Wilder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449674l/8253._SX50_.jpg|2299540] is the story of Chancey or as seen through Chancey's eyes, and Chancey is a much less attractive character than Sayward. I was impressed with how [a:Conrad Richter|8559|Conrad Richter|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1422278594p2/8559.jpg] used this approach to provide the reader with different ways of seeing Sayward and ultimately provided a richer, more detailed understanding of her rather than just feeding the reader more of the same. I also enjoyed how he described the differences between generations and the resulting generation gaps. It is so like us, or at least me, to think that generation gaps are a development of more recent history (20th century). I did feel the manner in which some of the subplots were wrapped up in [b:The Town|8253|Little Town on the Prairie (Little House, #7)|Laura Ingalls Wilder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449674l/8253._SX50_.jpg|2299540] was a little too convenient. Might it not have been better to just leave those subplots hanging, representative of how families lose touch, never to reconnect?

Dessert was delicious and more than I would have guessed. ( )

As a stand-alone this doesn’t begin to compare to the first book in Conrad Richter’s The Awakening Land series, The Trees, but it is a satisfying conclusion to the story of the first pioneers to settle the Ohio Valley. What I liked was that it brought to life the traces of 19th century Ohio I’ve glimpsed in small towns along the canal that linked the Tuscarawas to Lake Erie and the Ohio River (although I've read this is set in a fictional town along the Scioto). What I didn’t like was that it focused as much on Sayward Luckett Wheeler’s youngest child Chancey as much as it did on Sayward herself and on the early Ohio history she and her fellow settlers helped to shape. This did show how their self sufficiency and resilience set them apart from the generations that followed but I felt the moralizing was heavy handed and detracted from the historical feel that made the first two books so special. Still, an outstanding series and well worth rereading. ( )