From the time of its first publication in 1960, Conrad Richter's The Waters of Kronos sparked lively debate about the extent to which its story of a belated return to childhood scenes mirrored key events of Richter's own life. As was well known at the time, Richter had spent several years in the Southwest, where he collected the material for his first successful book, Early Americans and Other Stories, but by 1933, he had returned to live in his hometown, Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. 
John Donner, the main protagonist in The Waters of Kronos, traces a similar route from west to east, although he finds that his family home and native town have been submerged under the deep waters of a lake formed by the construction of a hydroelectric dam. As Richter narrates his alter ego's efforts to salvage his past, he moves beyond "semi-autobiography" to offer what are widely recognized as his most haunting reflections upon the power of family history, the fragility of human memory, and art's role in structuring the communal ethos. David McCullough, a fellow Pulitzer Prize winner, met and befriended Richter in the 1960s and has called him "an American master," praising The Waters of Kronos as "his most beautiful book."

The Waters of Kronos

Literature & Fiction

Richter, Conrad

United States

Penn State University Press

Sayward, a pioneer in Ohio's forest, helps clear and farm the land and watches the town develop

The Awakening Land: The Trees, The Fields, & The Town

Alfred.A. Knopf

The decree read that all white captives must be returned and Stone Girl had to leave her husband for an unknown way of life

A Country of Strangers

Contemporary

KNOPF

Hardcover, First Edition, 1968, Alfred A. Knopf, green cloth-covered boards.

The Aristocrat

Random House]

One of 3 novels about Sayward and Portius Wheeler, the family they raise, and the taming of the Ohio wilderness where they settled

The Fields

Literary

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Though reared as a Lenni Lenape Indian, fifteen-year-old True Son, once called John Camera Butler, was ordered back to the white man. It was impossible for True Son to believe that his people were white and not Indian. He had learned to hate the white man. And now he learned to hate his new father, his new house, his new family. He hated the name John Butler. Where did he belong now--and where could he go?From the Paperback edition.

Light in the Forest

First edition. Presentation from the author on the front free endpaper. The book was based on designs by W.A. Dwiggins and printed in Linotype Janson by the Plimpton Press. Conrad Richter 1890-1968 won a Pulitzer Prize for this novel, the final book in his Awakening Land trilogy, followingThe Trees, and The Fields. This carefully researched historical novel continues the tumultuous story of the Lucketts, a family in the Ohio valley, grown to face the changing ways of America during the first half of the nineteenth century. There are few works of historical fiction that make the reader feel that the writer was actually there and came back-a transmigrated soul-to tell a story. The Awakening Land is such a work....it would be a great novel in any literature Isaac Bashevis, 1968 . Bookplate of the person mentioned in the presentation on the front pastedown endpaper. Minor wear to dust jacket. x , 433, 3 pages. decorated cloth, dust jacket. small 8vo..

The Town

Genre Fiction

Lutie arrives in Texas only to discover it is torn by violence as her bridegroom, a rancher, wages war against the settlers

The Sea of Grass

This vivid portrayal of the hardships and satisfactions of pioneer life follows the Lucketts westward through the American wilderness

The Trees

Action & Adventure

Eight stories by the Pulitzer Prize-winner share similar settings and characters--pioneer days and the pioneers who lived them--and are bound by the unifying theme of marriage

The Rawhide Knot and Other Stories

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