Robin Clifford Wood - The Field House: A Writers Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
THE FIELD HOUSE

I just finished this lovely book and feel richer for it. Meticulously researched and deeply felt, The Field House is a compelling hybrid of biography and memoir. An exploration of the life and legacy of novelist-poet Rachel Field, it is interwoven with personal reflections that reveal the influence of Fields work ethic and passion on the biographers life. This book is also a meditation on the nature of creativity and a love letter to a house on Sutton Island in Maine once owned by Field and now by Wood. For both writers, the house became a touchstone and a haven, a place to reflect and rejuvenate and create.

- #1 New York Times best-selling author Christina Baker Kline

The Field House lures readers to a long-abandoned, wood-framed house on an island off the coast of Maine. When author Robin Clifford Wood buys a summer cottage belonging to famed poet and award-winning author Rachel Field, Wood is haunted by Fields sudden death, her untold stories. Discovering treasures and clues Field left behind, Wood weaves a stunning and intimate portrait of a once-prized American writer and poet who deserves to be remembered.

Barbara Walsh, Pulitzer Prizewinning writer and author of August Gale: A Father and Daughters Journey into the Storm and Sammy in the Sky

This elegant hybrid of biography and memoir introduced me to Rachel Field and Robin Clifford Wood, whose lives, separated by generations, uncannily twine. Compelling, instructive, inspiring, and beautifully written. I was greatly moved.

Monica Wood, award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy, When We Were the Kennedys, and Any Bitter Thing

Robin Clifford Woods biography of Rachel Field is a beautiful and thorough history of an artist and writer with important connections to Maine. In The Field House, Wood doesnt back away from the complexity of Fields life: self-doubt, aspirations, flaws, triumphs, unrequited loves, and final losses. And yet this book is also a clear-eyed survey of the literary world of the 1920s and 30s, Maine island life, and a woman who, transcending gender roles and notions of physical beauty, offered the world a gift that, because of Woods deeply personal book, will hopefully never be forgotten.

Jaed Coffin, author of Roughhouse Friday and A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants

I highly recommend Woods enchanting The Field House, her intensely personal reckoning with the life and work of the nearly forgotten author Rachel Field Field left plenty of evidence for her biographer to explorein archives across the country, and in the Maine island cottage they both called home in a curious twist of fate that enabled this charming and heartfelt narrative.

Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

Robin Clifford Wood has combined immense archival material and keen insights to create a detailed and enchanting biography of Rachel Field. The authors skillful use of granular sources, paired with her sophisticated wordsmithing, has produced a book that is both informative and lyrical. Readers will also appreciate the authors parallel discussion of the writing process itselfan articulate discussion that will undoubtedly seem familiar to anyone who has ever struggled to discover and tell a story. This is a delight to read.

historian Jacalyn Eddy, author of Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Childrens Book Publishing, 19191939

This fascinating book about the life of Newbery Medal-winning author Rachel Field lives at the intersection of seamless research and rich personal reflection. Robin Clifford Wood offers such insightful, knowing details about Fields writing life and her personal attachment to Maine, that we come to feel we are reading the account of a close friend. Wonderfully executed, The Field House renders Fields extraordinary life with great empathy and beautiful, lucid prose.

Susan Conley, critically acclaimed author of Landslide, Elsey Come Home, The Foremost Good Fortune, and Paris Was the Place

This wonderful bookbased on meticulously thorough, devoted researchis a lovingly tender, wise, and judicious account of Rachel Field and her world. Its unusual blend of memoir and biography helps to illuminate the life, even as a poignant dialogue between the author and her subject unfolds. Truly, a tour-de-force!

Benson Bobrick, award-winning author of Angel in the Whirlwind and Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired

THE
FIELD HOUSE

Copyright 2021 Robin Clifford Wood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-045-1

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-046-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020917547

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

Circular inset silhouette on the cover reproduced from Rachel Fields original illustrations

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

To my mother, who opened my heart.

To my husband, who opened my wings.

Oh, you wont know why, and you cant say how
Such change upon you came,
Butonce you have slept on an island
Youll never be quite the same!

RACHEL FIELD,
IF ONCE YOU HAVE SLEPT ON AN ISLAND

Silhouette illustration by Rachel Lyman Field, from The Pointed People

I n 1994, my husband and I purchased a long-abandoned wood-frame house on an island off the coast of Maine. In the 1920s and 30s it had been the summer house of author Rachel Field, on the island that inspired all her most successful workthe poetry, plays, childrens books, and novels that took her from struggling writer to Newbery medalist, National Book Award winner, then rising Hollywood success. At the peak of her renown she died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving so many stories untold, including her own. When I first walked into the island home that had been her magical place, her muse, some of those stories reached out tendrils, looking for a place to attach themselves. I felt their presence in the flutters of my heart but didnt know at the time what it meant.

Many people know the sensation of entering an old house and feeling something of its history in the air. It whispers from the corners, buzzes indecipherably in the motes of dust illuminated by a ray of sunlight through wavy glass. The building retains some indefinable quality left behind by its former inhabitants, some of their energy lingering in the atmosphere.