Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

First published: 1966

Type of work: Psychological realism

Themes: Coming-of-age, family, friendship, and love and romance

Time of work: The 1930’s

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: A small Midwestern community

Principal Characters:

• Julie Trelling, a talented young girl who is reared by a maiden aunt
• Aunt Cordelia, her schoolteacher aunt, who is stern but compassionate
• Uncle Haskell, Cordelia’s brother, an alcoholic recluse who aspires to be a writer
• Adam Trelling, Julie’s father, a pleasant man who is a professor at a local college
• Alicia Trelling, Julie’s wise stepmother and her high school English teacher
• Brett Kingsman, Julie’s first boyfriend, a brash, shallow young man
• Chris and Danny Trevort, neighbor boys

The Story

The title of Up a Road Slowly aptly portrays the life of its main character, Julie Trelling. At seven, Julie finds it difficult to understand all the commotion surrounding her mother’s death and funeral, and she is even more bewildered when she awakens one morning at Aunt Cordelia’s, where she had been taken after being given a sedative. Her first morning, Julie hides in a closet. When Cordelia climbs in with her, holding the trembling child and sharing her tears, Julie warms to her caring gesture. Reality sets in and Julie recognizes that she and her brother Chris, who is nine, will live with Cordelia and go to school while her seventeen-year-old sister stays in town with their father to finish her senior year.

School begins, and Aunt Cordelia is the teacher in the one-room country schoolhouse. She is a stern, rigid teacher who, Julie laments, likes the boys, especially her neighbors Chris and Danny Trevort, better than the girls. Aunt Cordelia persists in calling Julie “Julia,” because that is the proper pronunciation and spelling of the name. Julie learns quickly to accept Aunt Cordelia’s eccentricities and takes them in stride.

For amusement, Julie, Chris, and often Danny, spy on Uncle Haskell, who lives in a carriage house behind the main house. In the evening, Uncle Haskell goes into the woods carrying a golf bag. The children discover its contents buried in shallow graves: Uncle Haskell is disposing of liquor bottles. This episode prompts Adam Trelling to put Chris in a boarding school, leaving Julie alone with Aunt Cordelia.

When Julie is ten, her sister Laura marries. Even the prospect of spending a summer vacation with Laura and Bill does not ease Julie’s sense of loss. When the vacation is over, however, she realizes that Laura can love both Bill and her sister. Julie is happy for Laura and at the prospect of becoming an aunt.

Julie begins eighth grade with the realization that this will be her last year with Aunt Cordelia. The death of a classmate, Aggie Kilpin, gives Julie more insight into her generous, kindly aunt, while the return to town of Jonathan Eltwing with his wife, Katy, provides her a glimpse into Aunt Cordelia’s past, for Jonathan was once Cordelia’s sweetheart. Finally, the marriage of Adam Trelling and Alicia is a significant turning point. Although Julie likes Alicia because she is more carefree than Aunt Cordelia, the changes Alicia makes in the Trelling home make Julie uncomfortable. Preferring the comfort of the familiar, she decides to remain at Aunt Cordelia’s for her high school years.

Julie tackles the challenges of high school with normal adolescent anxieties. Academically, Julie is a very good student; English is her favorite subject, because she likes to write. Socially, life is slow until Brett Kingsman enters her life. Julie is overwhelmed by Brett’s good looks, while Brett takes advantage of Julie’s academic talent. Recognizing Julie’s style and ideas in Brett’s work, Alicia issues a firm warning that helps to end this unhealthy relationship. Aunt Cordelia’s warmth and care help Julie recuperate.

Julie’s focus now shifts to her writing. Under the tutelage of Uncle Haskell, a stern taskmaster, she rewrites and polishes her short stories while trying to keep up with her schoolwork. Her reward is getting a piece published in a literary magazine, a surprise to Julie, who did not know that Uncle Haskell had submitted it. Her exuberance is dimmed by Uncle Haskell’s untimely death from a liver disease.

During her senior year, Julie’s friendship with Danny Trevort blossoms into romance. She is the class valedictorian and plans to attend a state university, while Danny will go to a school several hundred miles east. Julie and Danny will be separated as Aunt Cordelia and Jonathan Eltwing were many years ago, completing the cycle of parallels between the life of Julie Trelling and that of Aunt Cordelia.

Context

Praised as a significant contribution to children’s fiction, Up a Road Slowly was awarded the American Library Association’s Newbery Medal in 1967. It was Irene Hunt’s second novel. Her first work, Across Five Aprils (1964), a historical piece, was a Newbery runner-up in 1965. As a contributor to the emerging genre of young adult fiction, Hunt was quickly recognized as a first-rank writer who could deal with adult issues that face young readers without being sentimental or patronizing.

As the young adult novel moved into the 1960’s, writers understood the need to deal with knotty problems facing adolescents. Writing about the impact on young lives of such issues as death, alcoholism, and sex became common. Ann Head’s Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, also published in 1966, is set in the 1960’s and focuses on the consequences of premarital sex. Though Hunt’s work is set in the 1930’s, Julie also faces these consequences—vicariously, through her friend Carlotta. After Julie escapes the sexually aggressive clutches of Brett Kingsman, Carlotta and Brett begin to date. Soon, however, Carlotta is sent away to live with an aunt—a typical means for dealing with teenage pregnancy in this era.

In her Newbery Medal acceptance address, Hunt stated her conviction that from books, children learn about life. Her works reflect this philosophy, for her subsequent novels expand on many of the poignant issues she raises in Up a Road Slowly. In No Promises in the Wind (1970), Josh develops and matures through the many people he meets, gaining a better understanding of himself and his alcoholic father and accepting life’s tragedies when a friend dies. George in The Lottery Rose (1976) is victimized by an alcoholic mother and subjected to abuse. George finds solace in kindly neighbors, especially a retarded child, and the beauty of a rosebush he has won. Julie, Josh, and George are emerging adults whose characters are shaped by a heterogeneous cast of family and friends with whom they interact while coping with life’s adversities and relishing its triumphs. There is no better way to teach children about life. That is life.