The Red House: Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England's Oldest Continuously Lived-In House FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Poet Sarah Messer has given an exquisite twist to the memoir genre with her nonfiction debut, Red House. Billed as "a mostly accurate account of New England's oldest continually lived-in house," Messer blends elements of regional history, architecture, genealogical research, and personal memoir to re-create a charming story of the historic Massachusetts home in which she was raised.
The Red House was built in 1647 by planter, shipbuilder, and mill worker Walter Hatch and continued to belong to the Hatches until 1965, when Messer's parents became only the second family to own it. Over the past four decades the Red House has become a living, breathing being, and a huge part of the author's family.
Messer alternates chapters of the book that trace the joys and miseries of the generations of Hatches who inhabited the house for three centuries with beautifully written recollections of her own family's life there. Her research and reflection yield many moving realizations about the nature and importance of a family identity and roots. But in the end, Messer concludes that though her family are the rightful owners of the Red House, it is perhaps more accurate to think of them as adoptive caretakers of a dwelling that will always contain the spirit of its ancestral occupants.
(Fall 2004 Selection)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Built in 1647, the Red House in Marshfield, Massachusetts, was the home of one family for eight generations. The will of Walter Hatch, the original owner and builder, hung on the living room wall and warned that Red House was to be passed down "forever from generation to generation to the world's end never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever." In 1965, Richard Warren Hatch went against the weight of tradition and sold the house to Sarah Messer's parents. Shortly after the Messers moved in, Hatch began returning photographs, furniture, and other objects to the house, many several hundred years old, saying they belonged there." "Weaving stories of the Hatch and Messer families and drawing upon recurring themes - such as fire, drowning, and X-rays - Sarah Messer explores the odd experience of growing up with another family's birthright. We meet eighteenth-century lovers, preachers, and shipbuilders; nineteenth-century poets and soldiers; and twentieth-century flower farmers and Girl Scout camp proprietors. We witness a 1970s reenactment of Pilgrim life, and a 1990s renovation project that brings the Messer family together only to take apart layer upon layer of myth and fact surrounding the Red House." This memoir asks thought-provoking questions about home, identity, and history and is a testament to how America fuses identity with place. What transforms a house into a family home? How do houses shape their inhabitants? What role does a Great House play in achieving the American Dream? Red House combines family lore with the pulse of real history.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Red House, built by Walter Hatch circa 1647, was one of the first houses in Marshfield, Mass., a coastal community some 30 miles south of Boston. Although it had been stipulated that the house would stay in the Hatch family, descendant Richard Hatch sold it to Messer's father in 1965, impressed with his respect for the property. While Messer didn't obsess over restoring the house to its "original" state, he approached all changes mindful of Red House history. And so the author (now a poet and teacher at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington) grew up in an oddly anachronistic household-with rag rugs instead of shag, Dutch ovens instead of electric ranges, wood instead of Formica. Daguerreotypes of 19th-century and photographs of 20th-century Hatches were carefully preserved; Hatch's original will was displayed on the wall. Although Messer felt like she was "growing up with someone else's history," this dual identity may have suggested her book's unusual form, which weaves Messer's story of growing up in Red House with the Hatch family's story. Her research into New England history unexpectedly fascinates (e.g., how 17th-century settlers would wear masks when carousing drunk to avoid identification; how they earmarked their communally grazing cattle). Beyond giving readers a sense of the liveliness of early New England life and explaining what it was like to grow up in a historic house, Messer gives readers a great sense of the power of a house to pull and shape its inhabitants. Agent, Amy Renner. (On sale June 21) Forecast: Local author events and national publicity will help market this book to lovers of quirky American history. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Poet Messer spins the life story of her childhood home in a handsome voice often eerily lost in reflection. Nonetheless, this is a document of history, and this is a house with a long one, starting in 1647 when Walter Hatch made a small purchase of land in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and built a structure with wattle-and-daub chimney, thatched roof, and oiled-paper windows. Members of the Hatch family lived there for nearly 300 years, enduring many winters during which they "stood scorched-faced before the fire, while the rest of the room to their backs filled with frost." In 1965, the author's father bought the Red House, and she grew up there. Messer (Poetry and Creative Nonfiction/Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington) elaborates the calendar of her days in and with the house, layered like a parfait between chronicles of the earlier inhabitants, who had left a rich paper legacy. Messer's recollections sometimes feel as hoary as those of the Hatches: she speaks of her father tying tinfoil bows on the fruit trees to scare away hungry birds, so that "the whole yard shook with the soft tinkling of the bows and spots of light"; and when she spied on her sister playing the piano, "I would lie down and peer through the cracks in the floorboards where I could see her hands moving over the keys, feeling only the thin space, the board, between me and the room below." Even the aftermath of a terrifying fire that decimated the building in 1971 is described with a poet's lyricism: "Entering a burned house was like entering a dream mind-some elements were missing entirely or moved to other locations, the rooms the same but clouded, slightly off." In a good way, much like Messer's prose. Anotherrevitalizing breath to sustain the Red House in its long odyssey. Agent: Amy Rennert/Amy Rennert Agency
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