Book Review
‘American Cream’ by Catherine Tudish
By John Freitag

Noted author Catherine Tudish of Strafford.

Strafford resident Catherine Tudish’s first novel, "American Cream," published by Scribner, is now at bookstores.

In this novel, Tudish returns to the small fictional Pennsylvania town of Tenny’s Landing, which was the setting for her collection of short stories published in 2005.

The story focuses on Virginia, a middle aged woman who, after her father, Nathan Rownd, is injured in a tractor accident, leaves her suburban life and returns to Tenny’s Landing with her teenage son to work the family farm. She struggles with the long periods of separation from her husband and relearns the insistent, exhausting cadence of farm chores. For better and worse, she is also thrown back into the life and people she grew up with. When Nathan decides to sell the farm, Virginia realizes how deep her connection to this land, which has been in her family for generations, is and begins to question who she is and where she belongs.

As one who really likes books, but is often at a loss to find one without a serial killer or a great deal of violence, "American Cream" was a joy to read. The characters were well drawn and the small town scenes very familiar.  

In the book, the Fourth of July parade features "a group of 12 women disguised in baggy housedresses, wigs and gaudy sunglasses, doing a sort of dance routine with folding aluminum chairs…which they opened and closed in time to the music, holding them first above their heads and then out to the side, as if they were pom-poms." Anyone who has been to an Independence Day parade in Strafford knows this describes one of our favorite groups of marchers.

Those not acquainted with small town life might think some of the characters and situations a bit stretched, however, if you have lived and been involved in a community for a length of time, it is hard to be surprised by the twists and turns that often take place in people’s lives.

While most of us in Strafford know Catherine Tudish as a nice person with a good sense of humor, she also has a career as a teacher. She taught writing and literature at Harvard for eight years before moving to Strafford to work as a journalist and fiction writer. Besides putting out books, she now teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English and Dartmouth College.

With its short chapters, often written from different characters’ points of view, "American Cream" is a great read for sleepy winter nights. However be warned—it may keep you up reading long after you should have turned off the light.

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