A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos

First published: 1979

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Family, death, and social issues

Time of work: 1830-1832

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Rural New Hampshire

Principal Characters:

• Catherine Hall, a thirteen-year-old New England girl, who cares for her widowed father and younger sister
• Charles Hall, her father, a farmer
• Mattie Hall, Catherine’s eight-year-old sister
• Ann Higham Hall (Mammann), the Boston widow who marries Charles Hall
• Daniel Higham, her thirteen-year-old son
• Cassie Shipman, Catherine’s best friend, who lives on the neighboring farm

The Story

Catherine Hall, the protagonist of A Gathering of Days, has a busy life for a thirteen-year-old. Since the death of her mother four years ago she has managed her father’s household and cared for her younger sister on their small New England farm. She takes the time, however, to record the details of daily life in her new journal. She writes about spotting the dark outline of a stranger in the woods one day while walking home. Later, her school notebook is missing; then she finds it left for her on a rock wall with the message “Pleez Miss Take Pity I Am Cold” scrawled inside. She takes one of her mother’s quilts, and she and her best friend Cassie Shipman place it beneath a tree for the man she suspects is a runaway slave.

Her father leaves her in charge for ten days while he goes to Boston with a wagon load of furs, maple sugar, and straw brooms to trade. She is shocked when he says upon his return that in a few weeks he is going to marry a widow, Ann Higham. As Catherine polishes pewter to prepare for the new arrival, she realizes that this is the last time that the house will be “ours alone.”

Her new stepmother brings with her a son Catherine’s age. Mother and son quickly adapt to country life, with Daniel pitching in to help Mr. Hall with the haying and his mother taking charge of things, ordering a vigorous spring cleaning right away. Catherine has vowed that she will not call the newcomer “Mother,” but by the time Daniel suggests she call his mother “Mammann,” she is finally ready for the first time to address the woman directly and finds herself confiding in her stepmother and appreciating her fair and loving ways.

When Little Mattie unwittingly reveals that Catherine has given away one of their mother’s twelve wedding quilts, the Halls decide that Catherine must make one to replace it. During many long days ahead she cuts, sorts, trims, and stitches the intricate pattern.

After picking whortleberries one hot August afternoon, Catherine and Cassie wash themselves in a pond, and by the next day, Cassie is bedded with a fever. As her condition worsens, the local doctor can merely recommend applying leeches. Mammann is so upset that she orders books on remedies so she will be better prepared if such an illness strikes in their family. A few days later, Cassie, who has always been sickly, dies in her sleep. A packet comes in the mail for Catherine with a note saying “Sisters Bless You. Free Now. Curtis. In Canada.” She realizes that the gift sent with it by the free man is meant to be shared with Cassie, and she places the pretty piece of lace on her friend’s grave.

Within a few weeks, Cassie’s aunt decides to go ahead with her planned wedding to the local schoolmaster, Edward Holt. The couple move away and a few months later send a letter asking Catherine to come live with them to help when their expected baby is born. With trust in the future, Catherine accepts her parents’ decision that she will go.

Context

Even in the setting of A Gathering of Days—far north in New Hampshire, in an isolated farm community—slavery was a hotly contested issue in the early 1800’s, when the story takes place. The main character overhears her elders discussing the speeches of Daniel Webster and sees her teacher reprimanded for reading to his students from antislavery newspapers. Her own father believes in observing the letter of the law and argues that he would certainly turn a runaway slave back to his master. When just such a runaway asks Catherine for help, she considers all the conflicting opinions she has heard and finally decides that the overriding principle should be the simple argument of her friend Cassie that it is always a kindness to help those in need. She takes a risk in giving the man a family quilt, and later when her deed is discovered, she must accept with maturity the consequences of her idealism. In the long days ahead, stitch by stitch, she makes a replacement quilt but never regrets her decision. After Cassie’s death, Catherine becomes more aware of the deaths of others: Nat Turner and those in the Negro Revolt, a neighbor family killed in a landslide, seven hundred who die in a far-off hurricane. She feels grief only for her friend but comes to realize that at the same time she is mourning all deaths and that there is some solace in feeling the shared grief of strangers.

Author Joan Blos was awarded the Newbery Medal for A Gathering of Days, her first children’s novel. The awards committee said that it revealed the significance of an individual’s life and a culture’s history. This book has been called a valuable supplement to the study of early American history; both its form and style closely resemble writings of the period it describes. A reviewer in the Horn Book magazine observed that the moral lessons frequently recorded by the narrator (such as “Speak the truth and lie not”) may sound strange to contemporary readers, “but in Catherine’s journal they are an integral part.”