A Gathering of Days ( A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32) by Joan W. Blos, 1979

Quietly beautiful and poignant, this book guides the reader through the everyday life of a young girl in the late 1800s. The strength of the narrator, Catherine Hall, lies not in anything remarkable about her, but in her normalcy. She writes as a daughter, an older sister, a classmate, a bestfriend, a young girl prone to mistakes and a bit of foolishness - but not overly so. Indeed, the charm of this tale lies in that it may have been the life of any girl at the time who helped at home by hemming, mending quilts, tending to the potatoes and parsnips, cooking, haying and cleaning. She also had her fun skating with her friends, gossiping and playing outdoors, appreciating each season for whatever blessings it can give her. My favorite passages are what she tells about autumn in New England.

A Study Guide

Oh, I do think, as has been said, that if getting in the corn and potatoes are the prose of a farm child's life, then nutting's the poetry. Chestnuts and beechnuts are plentiful now, and some hickories. Also, happily in good supply are those which are my special delight, the rich, round butternuts. The woods these days are glorious and gold, but there still hover over the meadow grasses small bright butterflies. Could these sweet hours but stay & stay, cruel Winter never come nigh! And as in every life, when there is spring, summer and autumn, there is always winter. Catherine as a young girl lost her mother, and years later lost her bestfriend Cassie to sickness as well. The story was set in the time when slavery in the United States of America was legal yet debate was brewing as to whether it was moral. Catherine's mixture of kindness, generosity and foolhardiness may have helped a man escape to his freedom.