Find this book!: child, parents, mid-1900s

February 3, 2012 2:52 PM

I'm looking for the name of this book. This is from my stepson (he's in his late teens) who read it in middle school. He remembers the plot but not the particulars.

Here's how he described it:

I need help on this book I read in middle school. I can't remember the name. It's set in the country/the South in the mid 1900s. It's told from a child's perspective. The mom and dad argue sometimes and I distinctly remember it saying that the mom would be right but the dad would argue with her and after a while would storm off with his bible to go in the barn or something. He would come back a couple hours later, and declare he found out what the right thing to do was and it would end up agreeing with what the wife originally said.

He does think mid 1900s, a black and white tv figures into it, and he says it has some women's rights themes in it as well. He also said:

The child runs away at some point and watches black/white tv during it sometimes.

posted by artlung to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Any idea on the gender of the child that runs away?
posted by holdkris99 at 4:03 PM on February 3, 2012

My side of the Mountain, maybe?
posted by holdkris99 at 4:07 PM on February 3, 2012

My Side of the Mountain is about a boy who has run away, but he runs away from an apartment in New York City to his great-grandfather's abandoned farm in the Adirondacks, so it doesn't sound like it matches artlung's stepson's recollection.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:57 PM on February 3, 2012

I read this! it's The Book of Samuel by Erik Rashke.
posted by misha at 11:04 PM on February 3, 2012

Response by poster: He's fairly sure the child was a boy. He looked at both "My Side of the Mountan" and "The Book of Samuel" and they don't sound right. I pressed him for other clues but his memory is frustratingly vague.
posted by artlung at 1:02 PM on February 4, 2012

Aw, darn. The B of S even has the Bible in the barn specifically!
posted by misha at 9:08 AM on February 6, 2012