Susanna and Sue

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909. 1st Edition. Hardcover_cloth. Collectible - Good. Alice Barber Stephens & N. C. Wyeth. 5.75"x8.5". 225 pages. Arabic date on title page. X-library w/graphics. Maroon cloth boards. Gray paste downs. One of the illustrators is N. C. WYETH (1882-1945). Frontispiece: Looking up into her mother's face expectantly. The four full page illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. Story frames by Wyeth. Each page has a vine design over top and some have cornicopia along bottom in orange. Spine straight, binding tight, pages soiled. No DJ. Hard rubs w/fraying to edges. Caroline rated it liked it.
Susanna and Sue by Kate Douglas Wiggins is a slight, 1909 novella about Susanna Hathaway who flees a bad marriage to live in a 19th century Shaker village. John Hathaway was not an abusive man, but he is a shallow rake and Susanna has had enough. She takes her daughter to live and work and regroup with the Shakers. They encourage her to renounce the outside world and join their idyllic community.
The portrayal of the Shakers, a strict, eccentric religious community, is surprisingly sympathetic. Its ideals are described and its virtues touted as Susanna struggles to decide her next move. For all that, however, it is not a propaganda piece, as the drawbacks are illustrated too. One small subplot involves two young members who leave the village in order to lead their own lives. Also given the sympathetic treatment is the wronged wife. She is not condemned for abandoning her home and husband (and son). Of course, given the time frame of the novel, the woman is saintly and then the man repents and the marriage is saved. Still surprising, though.
It is somewhat interesting as a period piece, both as a near-contemporary portrait of the Shakers and as conventional Edwardian fiction, growing slowly more modern. Source: Goodreads.