Raintree County by Ross Lockridge

First published: 1948

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of plot: Late nineteenth century

Locale: Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and New York

Principal characters

• John Wickliff Shawnessy, teacher, Civil War veteran, and longtime resident of Raintree County, Indiana
• Nell Gaither, a woman with whom he is in love
• Susanna Drake, a visitor from the South who becomes John’s first wife
• Esther Root, John’s student and later his second wife
• Garwood B. Jones, John’s boyhood friend and later a U.S. senator
• Jerusalem Webster Stiles, John’s teacher and later his friend
• Flash Perkins, fastest runner in Raintree County and later John’s companion in the Civil War

The Story:

A big celebration is held in Raintree County, Indiana, on July 4, 1892. The birthday of the nation is noted with the usual parades and fireworks, and everyone is excited that Indiana senator Garwood Jones is returning to his hometown to make a speech. Among those who greet the senator is his old friend and rival John Wickliff Shawnessy, who once opposed Jones for political office and lost. As Shawnessy experiences the events of the day, his mind wanders back to other times.

Shawnessy remembers growing up in Raintree County, the son of T. D. Shawnessy, a physician and preacher, and Ellen Shawnessy, a wise and gentle woman. John’s early life is haunted by the legend of the raintree, a magic tree with yellow flowers that is rumored to grow somewhere in the county. Most of the county is easy to travel over, so the most likely place for the fabulous raintree to be hidden is deep in a swamp at the end of a lake in the middle of the county. John vows that he will find the raintree some day. He also has another dream of writing a great epic that will encapsulate and explain not only Raintree County but also the American republic.

John’s adolescence is affected by three people. Jerusalem Webster Stiles, known as the Perfessor, establishes an academy that young Johnny Shawnessy attends, along with his friends Garwood Jones and Nell Gaither. The Perfessor is only a few years older than his students, and he has a cynical, worldly-wise attitude that frequently puts him in conflict with his fellow citizens and occasions a debate with the more optimistic Shawnessy that lasts a lifetime. Garwood is a smoother self-promoter than the Perfessor; he knows how to manipulate people, telling them what they want to hear. Even as a youth he is well on his way to a successful career in politics. Nell Gaither is a spirited blond beauty with whom John is deeply in love. She loves him too, but each is too shy to approach the other. John and Nell communicate only through vague hints and inscriptions in books that they give each other. John’s love for Nell is made permanent when he sees her naked, rising from the lake; Nell later reveals that she knew he was there that day.

The day of John’s graduation from the Perfessor’s academy is packed with excitement. When John has his graduation picture taken, he meets in the photographer’s studio a beautiful visitor from the South, Susanna Drake. After the graduation ceremony, everyone goes to the lake, and John and Nell (who is apart for once from her usual escort, Garwood) are about to consummate their love for each other when they are interrupted by cries from their companions—a posse is hunting for the Perfessor, who has run off with the minister’s wife. In fact, the couple missed their train, and the minister’s wife has gone back home. Johnny finds the Perfessor and helps him to escape.

That same year, the Fourth of July celebration is enlivened by a race between John and Flash Perkins, a runner who has never been beaten. John’s friends plan to fix the race by getting Flash drunk, but this scheme backfires when John gets drunk instead. He wins the race anyway, and once again everyone goes to the lake to picnic. His inhibitions loosened by drink, John makes love for the first time—with Susanna Drake.

Later Susanna tells John that she is pregnant, and he does the honorable thing and marries her. They take a trip to New Orleans, where John learns of Susanna’s tragic past. Her mother had gone insane, and her father is rumored to have had an intimate relationship with a slave. All of these people died in a fire that destroyed the plantation house; only Susanna survived. Susanna is horrified by the possibility that she might be her father’s child by the slave, and she is also worried that she might go mad like her mother. After they return to Raintree County, Susanna gives birth to a son, but soon her madness begins to assert itself, and Susanna burns down their house, killing their child. Hopelessly insane, she is sent back to the South.

Meanwhile, the Civil War has begun; because he had a family, John has not yet served in the Union Army. After Susanna is sent away, however, he becomes a soldier, meeting once again Flash Perkins and the Perfessor, who is a war correspondent. John and Flash are in the Battle of Chickamauga. Later, Flash is killed and John is wounded during General William T. Sherman’s march through Georgia.

John recovers from his wounds in Washington, D.C., where he and the Perfessor witness the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Back home, a false report leads people to believe that John is dead. After spending two years in New York with the Perfessor, John goes back to Raintree County after his mother’s death. He discovers that Nell Gaither had married Garwood Jones and had died in childbirth. John runs against Garwood for a seat in Congress, but the people of the county are not ready to hear John’s message of reconciliation with the South. John settles down to become the local schoolteacher, and after Susanna runs away from her keepers and is declared dead, he takes for his second wife one of his students, Esther Root. Esther’s father disapproves of the marriage and refuses to see his daughter, even though John and Esther prosper and raise a family.

One event almost ruins John. A local preacher tries to attack him, saying that John has an illicit relationship with a local widow, but the Perfessor, in town for the celebration of July 4, 1892, shows that it is actually the preacher who is guilty of adultery with one of the local women. The Perfessor, who was once run out of town by an angry minister, has the pleasure of revealing a minister as a hypocrite. As John returns from the Fourth of July celebration, he thinks of all of his life and the lives of his friends and his country as a great quest like quest one he started for the raintree long before.

Bibliography

Blotner, Joseph L. “Raintree County Revisited.” Western Humanities Review 10 (Winter, 1956): 57-64. Reassesses the novel favorably and places it in both Western and American literary traditions.

Erisman, Fred. “Raintree County and the Power of Place.” Markham Review 8 (Winter, 1979): 36-40. Argues that much of the power of Raintree County derives from the tension between its contrasting urban and rural settings.

Greiner, Donald J. “Ross Lockridge and the Tragedy of Raintree County.” Critique 20, no. 3 (April, 1979): 51-63. Identifies the author of the novel with the hero of the book and notes that both are on a quest. Shawnessy survives his failure to write a great epic, and Lockridge, who killed himself shortly after the book was published, was not able to accept that his epic was over.

Leggett, John. Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies. Rev. ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000. Recounts the lives, literary careers, and suicides of Lockridge and Thomas Heggen, the author of Mister Roberts (1946).

Lockridge, Larry. Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of “Raintree County.” New York: Viking Press, 1994. The definitive biography of the book’s author, written by his son.

Madden, David, and Peggy Bach, eds. Classics of Civil War Fiction. 1991. Reprint. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. Raintree County is one of the fourteen works of Civil War fiction examined in this study. Includes an introduction that surveys the genre of Civil War literature and reassesses its place in American literary history.

White, Ray Lewis. “Raintree County and the Critics of ’48.” MidAmerica 11 (1984): 149-170. Assesses the first critical reception of the novel.