There's No Denying Lyddie's Strength


Set during the American industrial period of the 19th century, Katherine Paterson’s Lyddie takes the life of its titular main character in hand, and infuses it with enough hardship, overcoming, and triumph to engage a reader while also telling a larger tale of how life might have been for workers during the time.

10-year old Lyddie’s father abandons his family’s Vermont farm in 1843, and Lyddie must go to work as a hired servant to make money for her mother and siblings. Separated from her mother, who goes to live with other relatives, Lyddie shows that her bucolic upbringing also provided the fortitude needed for what awaits her in the world outside the farm.

First working in a tavern, Lyddie adjusts to working among strangers for the first time. She then ventures to Lowell, Massachusetts to work in a cloth factory, where she hopes to make enough money to pay off the farm’s debts and reunite her family.

By the time she reconnects with her family towards the end of the book, Lyddie has become a different, self-realized person. To her dismay, the farm has been sold, so Lyddie pivots again, setting her sights on college.

The book is a sleepy but engrossing meander through one young person’s life during a unique period in America’s development. There is not a lot of flash to the book, but plenty of realistic obstacles. Lyddie grows up learning to take care of herself, to be useful, and to readjust her expectations in order to get to the next place in life. A self-made person, Lyddie could easily be a role-model for young readers.

Thanks to my Oberlin buddy Mary Wilson for suggesting I read Lyddie. I think the numerous shout outs to Oberlin College in the book might have played into the recommendation, and I wasn’t mad about them.

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