Mountain Path does not fall into the sentimental tradition of most mountain fiction up to that time…. Mountain Path is the story of an outsider who comes into the mountains with little or no background for understanding the people and their ways….

[The plot] is interesting enough; but it is not really the crux of the novel. On the contrary, the plot exists primarily to provide continuity for the presentation of a gallery of mountain people and, indeed, of a whole way of life. (p. 45)

[It] is not plot that makes Mountain Path a successful novel—for, from that standpoint, the narrative is no more nor no less than those of the host of mountain novels that preceded and accompanied it. Indeed, if Path has weaknesses, they lie in the area of plot. Events are melodramatic and often contrived; characters are occasionally incorporated into the story with little or no relevance to the story line; and foreshadowing is often too obvious. But these flaws are diminished when viewed against the total fabric of the novel.

In Mountain Path Mrs. Arnow has successfully juxtaposed two life views—that of the inhabitants of Cal Valley and that of the world of "civilization" (Louisa). They bring each other into sharp relief and, indeed, are the raison d'être of the novel. In this sense, the plot is merely a vehicle and not an end in itself. Only occasionally does it impinge upon the theme in any obtrusive way. For Mrs. Arnow had the artistic sensitivity and ability to underwrite the story, thus allowing the characters themselves—and the setting—greater exposure. She does not take a moral or ethical stand; she merely presents. But she does not present in a coldly objective fashion as many Realists might.

On the contrary, her sympathy for her characters is clearly discernible. It does not, however, manifest itself in the sentimental fashion that marks so many other mountain novels. Louisa and the Cals all have their faults as well as their virtues. (p. 54)

Mountain Path was received with considerable plaudits by reviewers—and rightly so. It represents in Southern-mountain fiction a break with the sentimentalism that marked that genre for so long. A clearly written and neatly structured novel,… it indicates [Arnow's] ability to identify with her characters while at the same time maintaining an artistic distance that lets them tell their own story—an ability she sharpened in later fictional efforts. (pp. 54-5)

Products of a young talent, [her short stories] are interesting primarily in the hints they provide for work later to come. Both "Marigolds and Mules" and "Washerwoman's Day" dwell simply on themes that Mrs. Arnow works out in more detail and with more artistry in her novels—ones dealing with the struggle of an individual to find meaning and self-identity in a world of condition. These stories, along with "The Hunters," show Mrs. Arnow's ability to remain detached from her material—to permit character and scene to carry the burden. Moreover, they reflect a precision of conception and development that gives them a certain degree of artistic stature in their own right. (p. 56)

The artistic promise apparent in Mountain Path reached fruition in Hunter's Horn, a novel in which Mrs. Arnow once more turned to the Kentucky hills for a setting. If the former work is somewhat encumbered by a melodramatic plot, the latter most certainly is not. In Horn, plot, setting, and characterization are woven together in such a way that they reinforce one another. The result is a highly unified and carefully structured story that, coupled with the artistic simplicity with which it is presented, makes Horn a novel of considerable distinction. (p. 63)

A simple plot summary may leave one with the impression that Horn is not much more than a hunting story, a story of men and hounds and the ritual of the hunt. To be sure, the novel is a hunting story; and, as such, it is interesting enough. But that is only the surface of the novel, the threshold, as it were, of a deeper and more poignant story that derives not only from the effects of Nunn's obsession on the characters in the book and indeed on himself but also from the forces that impinge upon the lives of all who live in Little Smokey Creek country.

Just as in Path, the setting is a vital element in Horn—even more so because of the increased sharpness with which Mrs. Arnow presents it. Viewed as a series of incidents occurring in Little Smokey Creek country, the novel exhibits many of the characteristics of local color. But Horn goes far beyond local color, for Mrs. Arnow is not the kind of Realist who produces merely a photographic and phonographic copy of real life. On the contrary, her Realism exposes the minds of the characters—their fears, their desires, their hates, and their loves. In this process, Mrs. Arnow, as she did in Path, reflects a sympathy for the hill people that emerges not from a sentimental point of view but from an honest emotional detachment and an unyielding artistic integrity. (pp. 64-5)

[Through] descriptive passages, Mrs. Arnow establishes a fundamental relationship between her characters and their environment. On this level, the characters know and understand their world. In short, they are at home in it. Moreover, they appreciate the natural world—not in any romantic or mystical sense, but in a very realistic and practical way…. (p. 66)

Harsh environment, superstition, and fundamental religion—all have their effects on the individual characters of Horn. These effects give the novel its deeper significance. (p. 69)

Through Nunn, Milly, Suse, and Sue Annie, Mrs. Arnow provides four contrasting points of view regarding life on Little Smokey Creek. (p. 82)

[Horn] is essentially a novel of people; for it is through its people that the reader comes to a realization and understanding of the novel's theme. To be sure, one could have a time for himself in analyzing the symbolic implications of King Devil, but the fox is not what really holds the book together thematically. Significant, yes, but as a symbol, he is inadequately and only intermittently developed. What does hold Horn together is the harmonious blend of plot, setting, and character; and, together, they make the novel a fresh and true picture of Kentucky hill life and of life in general.

Isolated in the backwash of time, Horn's people live out their existence with little hope of bettering their lot or of providing their children with much of a chance to better theirs. The relentless conditions of their world, social and physical, dull their sensitivities and prevent them from experiencing almost any emotion except that drummed up by a ranting fundamental preacher or fired up by moonshine whiskey. As a result, they are driven into a self-centeredness which feeds upon itself, breeding distrust, fear, and occasional violence where there is a desperate need for compassion and sympathy.

In providing this rather devastating view of life, Mrs. Arnow does not resort to involved psychological analysis of character nor to the sentimental or moral pleading of social criticism—though certainly the potential for both is abundantly present in the novel. She presents no heroes, no heroines, no great tragedy. Her people are human, with strengths and weaknesses inextricably bound up in their being profoundly affected by their environment. (p. 83)

Thus, while Horn is a novel of the soil, it is something more than that. Beginning in the fall and ending in the spring (two and one-half years later), the story is pervaded by a strong life impulse in both man and nature, an impulse that will survive regardless of social or natural barriers. And that is what Horn is about. It's not a question of progressing or regressing; it's a question of living or dying—and of the need for love and compassion. (p. 84)

The Dollmaker, opening on a remote hillside in Kentucky and closing in a cluttered housing project alley in Detroit, is from beginning to end Gertie Nevels' story, and she as a character looms large. Through Gertie's eyes the reader sees the contrast between life in the Kentucky hills and life in an industrialized city—and, indeed, the disintegration of a family as its members try to make the transition from rural to urban ways. And during the course of the story, it is Gertie who … gradually comes to a fuller understanding of life in general and of her own life in particular. (p. 85)

To be herself, always so important to Gertie, is not easy in Detroit. The values that sustained her over the years in Kentucky were rooted in a right relationship with nature, a relationship that is virtually impossible to realize in a housing project…. In Kentucky, Gertie was her own woman; but, more than that, she was the force that held her family together. She knew her husband and each of her children—their strengths, their weaknesses, and their dreams.

Moreover, she knew her own dream—to own the Tipton Place; and, though she might have wondered in Kentucky just as she does in Detroit about the ultimate meaning of life, she always had that dream to sustain her. In Detroit, however, she must find something else for spiritual sustenance; and, when she does, she becomes more than she was in Kentucky.

In Detroit, as in Kentucky, Gertie's wood carving serves as a metaphor for her search for order and permanency. But she is not to find them through carving alone, just as she would never have found them through land alone. Gertie learns this lesson from the people in the alley…. (p. 99)

Thus, Gertie comes to understand and appreciate people—something that she could never have fully come to in the hills. But, more than that, she learns something about herself and the Christ that she has been seeking for so long. Before, she could bring him alive only in her mind, like Cassie with Callie Lou; in Detroit, she brings him alive through her experiences with people. She also realizes that He has not one but many faces. In her final symbolic act of splitting the block of wood, she does not destroy her Christ, but brings him alive—for He cannot be abstracted or fixed; He must live in people.

Using her knowledge of the Kentucky hill people and of life in a war-time Detroit housing project, Mrs. Arnow presents in The Dollmaker a realistic story of human aspirations and tragedies. Though it is a rather long novel, it still maintains the pace that marks all of her work. To report so many daily events, as Mrs. Arnow does in The Dollmaker, could become dreary indeed; but such is not the case. Through careful selection and skillful weaving, she brings these events together in a thematic unity that holds the reader without any melodramatic surprises or sentimental intrusions. Moreover, she has successfully resisted the obvious temptation that such a story offers for moralizing. While she may deplore the conditions that limit man, she never once condemns man. Nor does she distort her characters to achieve tragedy; or to put it another way, her characters are not pathetic but human. (p. 100)

The roots of Seedtime on the Cumberland (1960) and Flowering of the Cumberland (1963) go back to Mrs. Arnow's childhood when she listened intently to the plethora of stories told by her parents and grandparents and when she wandered alone over the hills and valleys near Burnside…. Mrs. Arnow … has gleaned a wealth of information about the land and its people and, moreover, organized it into two excellent examples of social history. (p. 101)

Seedtime may not be a history in the formal sense, but it is certainly made up of the stuff of history. Drawing not only upon her own rich background, Mrs. Arnow delved deeply into state records, county court minutes, wills, deeds, diaries, letters…. And, because it resembles a scrapbook, Seedtime captures the imagination of the reader in a way that most histories, social or otherwise, do not. (pp. 101-02)

Flowering of the Cumberland is not so much a sequel to [Seedtime] as it is a companion piece…. Mrs. Arnow points out that Flowering contains less of great events and famous men that does Seedtime—that it "is concerned with the pioneer as a member of society engaged in those activities which, different from hunting or house building, could not be performed by a lone man or family." (p. 105)

Mrs. Arnow dwells on all aspects of the life of the early settlers along the Cumberland. The reader learns not only about such broad areas as language patterns, social structures, religious views, farming methods, educational efforts, river navigation, and business endeavors, but also about songs sung, jokes told, and games played.

It is, to be sure, always dangerous to generalize about any group of people, the Cumberland pioneers notwithstanding; and Mrs. Arnow does little of it in either Seedtime or Flowering. In neither does she attempt any definitive social, intellectual, or political theory; she merely lets the wealth of detail she had at her disposal speak for itself. The result is two books that present clearly and unsentimentally a way of life that is as refreshing to the reader as it was hard to the Cumberlander. In short, Seedtime and Flowering provide one of the best pictures of what life really was in the "old boot." (pp. 108-09)

Many of the characters in Harriette Arnow's novels are involved in a quest of one kind or another…. Susie Schnitzer, the main character in The Weedkiller's Daughter, is no different. A precocious fifteen-year-old girl from Eden Hills, an elite Detroit suburb, she strives to realize an ideal—one engendered in a preservation of her own self-identity.

Coming from a contemporary background of considerable affluence, Susie, on the surface, is a dutiful and loving daughter. In reality, however, she is an outcast; she is unable and unwilling to fit into the pattern of living prescribed generally by Eden Hills and specifically by her politically and socially right-wing father. Living in the computer age, she has ironically programmed herself—with her own internal computer, TV, and radar—to react to any given situation in the way expected by the Establishment. She is well aware of the roles one is required to play; but, unlike her parents, she will not let these roles become her reality. (p. 110)

In both Hunter's Horn and The Dollmaker a breakdown in communication occurs between parents and children—and so too is there one in The Weedkiller's Daughter, but this one is accompanied by an apparent lack of love…. Conditioned by a materialistic world where appearance is all important, where new money tries to get close to old money, where old money tries to maintain its position of superior isolation, and where prejudice and discrimination abound, Mr. and Mrs. Herman Schnitzer seem almost incapable of love. Whatever potential they may have had for basic human emotions, ideals, and relationships have been suffocated among the carefully groomed two-acre executive estates that symbolically dot Eden Hills…. (pp. 111-12)

The Schnitzers are representative of a world that, despite—or perhaps because of—its great material progress has lost the sense of divine presence. (p. 113)

Susie is in some respects a female counterpart to Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye. Both are aware of the hypocrisy and apparent lack of compassion that mark the adult world, and both have a romantic attraction to the past as a representation of something fixed—an order that contrasts with the anxiety and chaos of the contemporary world. (p. 119)

Artistically speaking, The Weedkiller's Daughter does not reach the level of quality of Mrs. Arnow's previous works. There is an air of the contrived about it. Incidents and characters, instead of growing out of the story, seem to have been set in like so many building blocks—with the result that they do not seem real. Even Susie is not always a believable character; indeed, like her teenage friends, she is often trite and too good. Moreover, the powerful scenes so often evoked in Hunter's Horn and The Dollmaker are missing in this book.

Yet, even with the above limitations, The Weedkiller's Daughter does not entirely fail; for it touches in no small way on the generation gap of its time. It speaks for the generation of young of the 1960's—disillusioned yet idealistic, naive yet wise beyond their years….

[Mrs. Arnow's] writing is clear and concise…. Using short, precise strokes, she evokes a mood, paints a scene, focuses on a dramatic moment, or isolates some aspect of a character that makes him live for the reader. The result is a style that serves as an unobtrusive and artistically effective vehicle for Mrs. Arnow's themes. (p. 123)

Through all of Mrs. Arnow's fiction, character rather than plot shapes the stories….

Of Mrs. Arnow's characters, the women stand out as the strongest and the most fully developed. Other than Nunn in Hunter's Horn, no male character is developed to any real degree. The reason for this lack of significant male characters is not that Mrs. Arnow is unable to portray men, because as her treatment of Nunn illustrates, she can project herself into the male psyche as well as into the female one. Perhaps it is engendered in her feeling that American literature has exhibited a paucity of truly substantial women characters. (p. 124)

All of Mrs. Arnow's fiction reflects an ironic approach. While she may be simply a storyteller, she does not oversimplify; for life is not to be explained in simple terms or easy philosophies. She knows, and her characters learn, that life is full of contradictions as well as harmonies and that good and evil are not always clearly discernible, but often overlap or fuse….

Closely related to Mrs. Arnow's ironic point of view is her treatment of nature. Throughout her stories runs the idea that nature, timeless and bigger than man, is the ultimate reality; but it, too, has its ironies. While in all the novels Mrs. Arnow sees an affinity between natural life and moral life, she does not flinch from the threatening aspects of nature. Indeed, the relationship between man and nature is not a reciprocal one so much as it is a one-sided one. It is man that must adapt to nature, for only in a correct adaptation can he find real sustenance; and this lesson is what many of Mrs. Arnow's characters either know or learn. (p. 126)

[While] most of Mrs. Arnow's stories could not be said to have unqualified happy endings, they do not hum the umbra's note to the extent that the works of so many contemporary American authors do. She is not, to be sure, a rearguard romanticist, but neither is she one who has lost hope in the present and future of man. She recognizes that human plans do not always coincide with the way things go. She also recognizes, however, that man has within him a certain indomitable spirit that, though occasionally stifled, can never be permanently erased. (p. 127)

Wilton Eckley, in his Harriette Arnow (copyright © 1974 by Twayne Publishers, Inc.; reprinted with the permission of Twayne Publishers, a Division of G. K. Hall & Co., Boston), Twayne, 1974, 138 p.