American Cream

By Catherine Tudish

Book Overview

When Catherine Tudish's story collection Tenney's Landing was published in 2005, Margot Livesey said Tudish "casts an irresistible spell" and David Huddle said, "Tenney's Landing conjures up a place and a people with that magical vividness we found in Porter, Welty, Cheever, and Updike." Here, in her first novel, Tudish has fashioned a masterful and intimate portrait of a woman returning, midlife, to the small farming community where she grew up.

After Nathan Rownd is injured in a tractor accident, his daughter, Virginia, leaves her suburban life and returns to Tenney's Landing with her teenage son to work the family farm. She struggles with the long periods of separation from her husband and begrudgingly relearns the insistent, exhausting cadence of farm chores. But when Nathan decides to sell the farm, Virginia realizes how deep her connection to the land is and begins to question who she is and where she belongs.
Catherine Tudish's writing is a tribute to small-town America. In simple, elegant prose she captures the rhythms of everyday life and the moments of truth and transformation that are found there. American Cream is a tender and wise novel by a writer of unusual sensitivity and grace.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743267699
• ISBN13: 9780743267694
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Sexy, funny, warm, heartbreaking

These are just a few of the words I could use to describe this beautifully written story of return. If you're reading Catherine Tudish's work for the first time, you'll be astonished by what you discover. Welcome to her growing fanclub!

More from Tenney's Landing

Catherine Tudish's book takes its title from a breed of draft horse that makes its appearance late in the novel. The setting, in rural Pennsylvania, is familiar to readers of Tudish's stellar collection of stories, Tenney's Landing, and is richly rendered. The focus is on Virginia Rownd MacLeod and her family, especially Virginia's efforts to deal with changes in the present and unresolved issues of the past. The characters are engaging and sympathetic, the dialog convincing, and poignant emotions are balanced with quiet humor. Altogether a great read.

I love this book!

American Cream is a beautifully written and deeply rewarding novel. Tudish portrays her characters with such wit and compassion that the reader comes to feel a real tenderness for them. And the novel is so emotionally rich and compelling that it is hard to put down. What a lovely book!

A wonderful story

I loved this book! One of the most memorable and powerful characters in this book is the country life and landscape, lovingly described, and within which much happens. There are many well drawn characters , people you know well by the end. This book and its setting grows out of a book of short stories by Tudish that I also recommend highly-"Tenney's Landing"

Praise for a debut novelist

Catherine uses a rural setting, Tenney's Landing (the fictional setting of her previous work), to portray the deep connections between the townspeople and Virginia, the main character, especially focusing on the Virginia's physical and emotional journey beginning with her mother's death and her father's remarriage. The amazing restraint of the text reveals the emotional struggles between families and friends, the loyalties of a woman to her family, her friends and herself, and the humor of the author. Each sentence has a sense of motion and action that is inspiring. I would recommend this novel to anyone who's beyond teenage fiction. Try to find her for a live reading as well, the author has an amazing presence, reserved and humerous like her novel. You do not need to read Tenney's Landing, her collection of short stories, to read this novel.