The grandmothers

In Short

Glenway Wescott’s 1927 novel traces the sprawling lineage of the Tower family through the consciousness of Alwyn Tower, a young man looking back from Europe at the Wisconsin frontier where his relatives carved out hard lives. The book unfolds in episodic portraits of grandparents, great-aunts, and uncles—capturing pioneer hardships, thwarted romances, and the psychological weight of ancestry. It has endured as a lyrical, elegiac masterpiece of Midwestern literature that explores how the past haunts and shapes those who inherit it.

The Story

The book begins in the quiet domestic sphere of young Alwyn Tower, surrounded by his grandmother’s keepsakes and the lingering ghosts of an older generation. Through historical reflection and family lore, the narrative unspools the saga of the Towers, starting with the grandparents who settled the Wisconsin frontier in the mid-nineteenth century. Henry Tower, a formidable man bonded to the land and skilled with animals, marries Serena Cannon, and later Rose Hamilton, siring a complicated brood. The narrative radiates outward into the tragic, wandering lives of his siblings and children.

We learn of Great-Aunt Mary Harris, whose adventurous life of global travel ends in a collection of foreign relics; Great-Aunt Nancy, who marries impulsively for love in Iowa but returns home lonesome and haunted; and Great-Uncle Leander, a gentle bachelor tending a flower garden while mourning his brother Hilary, who vanished at sixteen in the Civil War. Other chapters follow Uncle Jim escaping his rustic roots for a campus romance, Uncle Evan deserting his past to fight in Cuba and reinvent himself as John Craig in London, and Aunt Flora sacrificing a quiet marriage proposal to the crushing expectations of family and community.

Interwoven are the stories of Alwyn’s maternal grandparents, Ira and Ursula Duff, and his parents, Ralph and Marianne, whose union is forged in pride and unrequited longing. As Alwyn matures, he recognizes how deeply his own desires and fears are entangled with the spirits of these pioneers. The book moves toward its close as the older generation fades. Alwyn sits beside his aging grandmother Tower on her deathbed, watching the quiet transition of power. When she finally passes away, Alwyn and his cousin Orfeo walk out into the dusk, bidding a permanent farewell to the dead and to the frontier home that shaped them.

How It Unfolds

The voyage begins Alwyn reflects on his childhood in a Wisconsin farmhouse surrounded by aging relatives, setting down a historical essay that summarizes the unwritten biographies of his pioneer family and America itself.

The pioneer legacy Early settlers arrive in a high tide of emigration to clear the land, build schools, and tame a raw wilderness, laying the foundation for a new society through sheer communal will.

Journeys and relics Great-Aunt Mary Harris dies after a lifetime of travel, leaving behind a cluttered room of foreign souvenirs that fixes her adventurous life in young Alwyn's memory like an old story.

Restless returns Nancy Tower flees an unhappy marriage in Iowa to return briefly to her family home, hiding her husband’s letters in her bodice while her relatives struggle to understand her quiet grief.

Gardens of memory Leander Tower lives a solitary life tending a meticulous flower garden and grieving his brother Hilary, finding a formal companionship in the proud, pious Mrs. Duff.

Ambition and departure Uncle Jim leaves for college, where he wrestles with the stark contrast between his humble, rough-hewn family background and the polished aspirations of his new love, Irene.

Fever and disillusionment Uncle Evan serves in the stifling, hostile climate of Cuba during the Spanish-American War, where the oppressive heat and foreign church darken his view of American expansion.

Renunciation and closure Aunt Flora quietly rejects a marriage proposal from Richard, paralyzed by the invisible gaze of her family and an unexplainable sense of ancient duty.

The final watch Alwyn keeps vigil at his grandmother’s bedside as she nears the end of her life, mediating on the dual motion of the human imagination pulling backward into memory and forward into death.

The People

Henry Tower is a rugged, commanding patriarch who masters wild horses and livestock with hypnotic calm, yet remains a hard, distant figure to his family. Serena Cannon and later Rose Hamilton serve as the enduring matriarchs who anchor the household through decades of child-rearing and grief. Leander Tower is a gentle, sensitive bachelor devoted to his flower garden and his lost brother Hilary, standing out as a rare beacon of refined gentleness among rough neighbors. Nancy Tower is a timid, delicate woman who yields to an overwhelming courtship by Jesse Davis, only to find herself isolated and homesick in Iowa. Jim Tower is an ambitious young man who struggles to reconcile his rustic, impoverished origins with his academic future and his wealthy sweetheart Irene. Evan Tower is a restless, sensitive soul who deserts his past, fights in Cuba, and flees to London under an assumed name to escape a disgraceful history. Flora Tower is a quiet daughter whose inability to voice her desires leads her to sacrifice love under the watchful eyes of her relatives. Marianne Duff is a proud, resolute woman who marries with calculated dignity after an unrequited romance, passing her strength down to her son, Alwyn, who serves as the inquiring consciousness through which all these lives are preserved.

In Its Own Voice

“Until Alwyn Tower grew to manhood he never forgot that everyone was older than he.” This early line establishes the heavy generational weight and retrospective lens through which the young protagonist views his aging family.

“A life in profile, an incredible history, a boy’s adventure story with a single female musketeer for heroine....” This description captures how Great-Aunt Mary Harris’s adventurous life is mythologized in young Alwyn’s memory.

“My life would have different if I had married him. But I was already married, so I didn’t love him.” Grandmother Tower confesses a lifelong secret on her deathbed regarding her quiet affection for the gentle Leander Tower.

What It's Really About

The book explores the heavy inheritance of memory and the psychological ties binding generations of pioneers to the American landscape. It investigates how family myths and unfulfilled personal histories shape the interior world of a sensitive child. Beneath the plot lies an inquiry into the loneliness of passion, the quiet tyranny of community expectations, and the inevitable friction between rustic survival and modern refinement. Wescott examines the American experiment not as a grand political abstraction, but as a deeply personal accumulation of dashed hopes, endurance, and quiet domestic tragedies.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate lyrical prose, psychological depth, and atmospheric regional literature will find a quiet brilliance in Wescott’s writing. Reading it feels like stepping into a sunlit, dust-motes-and-photographs attic where every object hums with forgotten history; it is meditative, unhurried, and deeply immersive. However, modern readers should be prepared for certain difficulties: the book is structurally episodic rather than driven by a fast-paced traditional plot, and it reflects the stark, unsparing realities and period attitudes of nineteenth-century Midwestern farm life. Yet what stays with you long after closing the book is its profound elegiac beauty—the sense of a whole civilization built by ordinary hands, captured just as it passes into legend.