The Hired Girl

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.

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

People: Joan Skraggs,  Joan of Arc,  Miss Chandler,  Father,  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  Ma,  Lucy Watkins,  Hazel Fry

Places: Lancaster,  America,  Pennsylvania,  United States

Times: 1911