The Descendant (e-book) (used book) | Ellen Glasgow | bookbook.eu

Description

Written in secret and published anonymously in 1897, "The Descendant "is""the story of an independent heroine who seeks passion rather than marriage. Ellen Glasgow's first novel, the book received mixed reviews, with praise for its insight and dramatic power and criticism that included charges of unwholesomeness and inconsistent characterization.

Excerpt:
The child sat upon the roadside. A stiff wind was ris ing westward, blowing over stretches of meadow-land that had long since run to waste, a scarlet tangle of sumac and sassafras. In the remote West, from whose heart the wind had risen, the death-bed of the Sun showed bloody after the carnage, and nearer at hand naked branches of poplar and sycamore were silhouetted against the shattered horizon, like skeletons of human arms that had withered in the wrath of God.

Over the meadows the amber light of the afterglow fell like rain. It warmed the spectres of dead carrot flowers, and they awoke to reflect its glory; it dabbled in the blood of sumac and pokeberry; and it set its fiery torch to the goldenrod till it ignited and burst into bloom, flashing a subtle flame from field to field, a glorious bonfire from the hand of Nature.