The Able McLaughlins: Summary
Dear lord, how many of these books are about callow young men? (And one young woman?) Seriously, people, I’m getting bildungsroman-ed out. Anyway, the following summary of The Able McLaughlins is rather extended; I found this book difficult to obtain and scarcely described online, so for the good of other intrepid Pulitzer readers, here are the full deets.
Our 1924 winner by Margaret Wilson is mainly about one son of a large Scottish clan that has overtaken the Iowa plains in the years surrounding the Civil War. Wully, the eldest of sixteen, has just arrived home from a stint in the Union army, determined to marry. He’s had his cap set for Chirstie McNair since they shared a tender moment during his convalescent visit home from the front, but when he rushes over to her home to propose, she dramatically avoids him, weeping and hiding in her house with her father’s old gun. After a few weeks of anguished confusion, he learns that, in his absence, Chirstie was raped by Peter Keith, the town ne’er-do-well. Wully drives Peter out of town, confronts his personal rage and shame, and pretty much strong-arms Chirstie into marrying him right away, even though she is pregnant with Peter’s child. Wully sets up house with Chirstie and her younger siblings (their mother is dead and their father has returned to the old country for a spell) and tells his family that the baby is his, suffering great shame from his mother because everyone’s doing the math between the baby’s expected date of arrival and their wedding date, and they just don’t add up.
Meanwhile, Chirstie’s absent father arrives back from Scotland with a new wife, Barbara. Barbara seems to be a bit of Glasgow society, for she has trunks of fine clothes and feels generally deceived by her husband for bringing her across the ocean to live “in a sty.” (In a fairly amusing diversion from the main plot, Barbara cons her cheapskate husband to build her an expensive new house that becomes the envy of the community.) Wully and Chirstie move in with the McLaughlins to await the birth of the baby, suffering the constant complaints of Libby Keith, Peter’s mother, bemoaning her absent son. Chirstie’s baby, wee Johnnie, is born, and he’s beloved by all despite the shameful circumstances of his conception.
Wully and family move into a new house with Wully’s younger brother, John, and begin to cultivate their own plot of land. Their peace is shattered, however, when Chirstie spots Peter Keith at their back door. She flips the script, and Wully decides to find Peter and kill him before he has a chance to do his family any more harm. In searching for him, Wully inadvertently alerts the neighborhood of Peter’s return home, and Libby Keith works everyone into a frenzied manhunt when Peter fails to show up at the family homestead. Even Wully is forced into the search for Peter, which drags on and on. And on
Eventually everyone must return to the harvest, but Wully decides to bring in his wheat and then leave the farm to sell lumber in town, thinking that Chirstie would feel safer in a less isolated spot. Irony of ironies, when he, Chirstie, and Johnnie are passing an idyllic day in town, Wully meets up with the dying Peter Keith, whom he refuses to transport back to his distraught mother. Chirstie, however, can’t handle having this sin on their collective souls, so in the end they load Peter into their wagon to bring him back home. It’s all good, though, because in the end Wully can gloat that Peter’s last earthly sights will be of Wully content with a beautiful wife raising Peter’s own son as his own. Sucka.
