Ruth Stewart

This Gentle Land: Growing Up in the 1930's and 40's Ruth Stewart

This Gentle Land is a blend of humor and pathos as it records the antics and hard work of six lively children of the Lassiter family who lived on a North Carolina farm in the middle of the 20th century. It portrays the parental strengths of love and faith in spite of the hardships of droughts, floods, a dust storm and a tornado. It captures the sense of farm life as it was lived when hoes and hands were used more than machinery. Written in poetic prose, this book follows life on a farm through the seasons from spring planting to the last harvesting of cotton before cold weather. It begins with the establishment of the home in 1930, and ends when the remaining parent leaves home at the age of ninety-seven in 2003.