The Hired Girl

By Laura Amy Schlitz

Subjects: Diary fiction, Farm life, fiction, authorship, young adult fiction, Juvenile audience, nyt:young-adult-hardcover=2015-12-27, New York Times bestseller, Historical fiction, Teenage, Young adult works, Pennsylvania, fiction, Historical fiction, hired help, Women household employees, Diaries, fiction, diaries, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, Children's fiction, teenage girls, Teen fiction, Juvenile works, household employees, Juvenile fiction, History, farm life, United states, history, 20th century, fiction

Description: Ever since the untimely death of her mother, 14 year-old Joan Skraggs has been desperately unhappy. Under the thumb of her cruel father and three sullen brothers, Joan lives like a servant on their farm just outside of Lancaster, forever cooking, cleaning, and attending to the many demands of the home. But she has little freedom, and less support from her family for her love of reading and blossoming interest in education. But when her father tells Joan she can't go to school anymore, it sets off a journey that will see her become first a runaway, then a hired girl on $6 a week, and finally her very own young woman. Set in America during the optimistic years before the First World War, and told through a series of journal entries, THE HIRED GIRL is the story of a young girl in search of Real Life and True Love. It takes in feminism and housework; money, religion, and social class; literature and education, romanticism and realism, first love and sexual yearnings, cats, hats, and bunions. And it's a comedy.