Ruth Suckow (1892-1960) was once a prominent novelist and short story writer in the early twentieth century. Born in Iowa, she lived all over the U.S., but supported herself through beekeeping until her first story was published in Midland, edited by John T. Frederick. From there, her fiction was widely published and distributed.
Her fiction was often set in Iowa including rural landscapes, characters, and scenes. So, she was pegged as a “regionalist” which may be why, in addition to her gender, she has faded from literary memory. She objected to the label.
Suckow was a master storyteller and stylist. Her rich, lush prose delivered subtle nuanced tales of working people tied to a sense of place.
2024 is the centenary of Ruth Suckow’s novel Country People, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, and reissued by Final Thursday Press, with an introduction by Julie Husband and Jim O’Loughlin.
What follows is an excerpt of a longer essay by James Calvin Schaap originally published in The Blazing Star Journal:
In Earlville, Iowa, Ruth Suckow’s little park reminds me of Suckow herself. To sit at one of those picnic tables felt to me like a “home-coming,” even though I’d never been there before. It was a return to Suckow’s small-town Midwest realities, most of which have lost their savor among today’s reading public. H. L. Mencken, her first editor, claimed to have discovered her and was first to publish her stories. For a decade or more, she was something of a star, even anthologized.
But that glory is gone now. What’s left is a little park in Earlville, Iowa, and, here and there perhaps, a copy of a novel or two. Aficionados like me can still sit right here on a bench on a warm summer day and read a story or two or three or four — maybe more — right here where she drew water a century ago. Even though I’d guess I’d be alone if I did, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a joy.
Here’s the Suckow story as her park tells it:
“Ruth Suckow loved the Iowa countryside near this site: The rolling farmlands, woods, streams, and wildflowers. She called the little house that stood here, ‘My house.’ Ruth was unknown when she came to Earlville in 1920. By 1926, she had published two novels and many short stories and was recognized in this country and abroad as the author of a fresh kind of realism. Her work tells in rich detail the life of middle-western communities in the earlier part of the 20th century: The family gatherings, church suppers, holiday celebrations, school commencements. Born in Hawarden, Iowa, on August 6, 1892, Ruth died in Claremont, California, January 25, 1960.”
It’s not a very big park. But then, neither was the lot, I suppose. Still, it was good to sit there for a time, to sit and think through the kinds of thoughts that can’t be shuffled along unmeasured, thoughts of numbering our days.
If you’re coming across Iowa, it’s two minutes off Highway 20. Won’t cost you much time. Who knows? You might like it. Might even like her.
Do me a favor. If you stop, give that merry-go-round a spin, okay? Put some ruts in that thick grass. Make the place look lived in.
Editor’s Note: This article was aired on Dec. 2, 2019, by Siouxland Public Media, KWIT FM 90.3 and KOJI FM 90.7, and published at kwit.org/post/secret-treasure-coming-home. This article is one in a series of broadcasts on KWIT and is available at KWIT.org as well as Schaap’s website – floydriverpress.com. Pro Rege — March 2020
Copyright © 2024 by James Calvin Schaap.
Photographs courtesy of James Schaap and Barbara Schaap.
Listen to James Schaap read from Country People:
Centennial Celebration: Country People, 1924-2024
Mary Swander will give the keynote address for the public Centennial Celebration of the publication of Country People, Iowa writer Ruth Suckow’s first novel, at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 14 at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls. Her talk and other afternoon celebratory activities (including cake) are free and open to the public.
First published in 1924, Country People follows four generations of the Iowa German American settler family, the Kaetterhenrys, from the 1870s to the early 1920s.
“Mary Swander is the ideal writer to launch the 100-year celebration of Country People, for she has written with beauty and depth of the Iowa landscape and people,” says Barbara Lounsberry, President of the Ruth Suckow Association. “We are eager to hear her thoughts on this 1924 novel.”
In the 1920s, H. L. Mencken wrote: “I regard Ruth Suckow as the most promising young writer of fiction, man or woman, now visibly at work in America.” In nine novels and 43 short stories — most set in Iowa — Suckow captured the lives, passions, and struggles of ordinary people in their small towns and farms. Her works include Iowa Interiors (short stories) and the novels Odyssey of a Nice Girl, The Folks (a Literary Guild selection and bestseller in 1934), A Part of the Institution (based on Grinnell College), and The John Wood Case (which draws on an actual northwest Iowa embezzlement tragedy).
A Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit will be on display in various Iowa locations in 2024 and 2025.
For more information on Ruth Suckow, on the free Centennial Celebration activities, on hosting the traveling exhibit, or on becoming a Ruth Suckow Memorial Association member or supporter, email lounsberry@gmail.com or see ruthsuckow.org.
Ruth Suckow Traveling Exhibit Schedule
January 1 – 28, 2024: Hawarden Public Library
February 4 – March 3: Burt Public Library
March 10 – April 7: Orange City Public Library
April 14 – May 12: Bettendorf Public Library
May 19 – June 16: Urbandale Public Library
June 23 – August 4: Cedar Falls Public Library
August 11– September 8: Polk City Public Library
September 15 – October 13: Robey Memorial Library, Waukon
October 20 – December 1: Ruth Suckow Public Library, Earlville
December 8, 2024 – January 5, 2025: Kendall Young Library, Webster City
January 12 – February 9, 2025: Drake Community Library, Grinnell
February 16 – March 16, 2025: Manchester Public Library
James Calvin Schaap
After a long teaching career at Dordt University (IA), James Calvin Schaap settled into retirement to do more writing and publishing, including a novel (Looking for Dawn), a collection of short stories (Up the Hill: Folktales from the Grave) and a compilation of historical sketches (Small Wonders: A Museum of Missouri River Stories). His “Small Wonders” are broadcast weekly on Siouxland Public Media, KWIT – the National Public Radio station in Sioux City. His blog is Stuff in the Basement. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Alton, Iowa.
Mary Swander is thrilled to be part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Read more by her and her esteemed colleagues in the Sunday Round-Up:
Thank you for introducing me to Ruth Suckow. If I were anywhere in the vicinity, I would go to her park and give the merry-go-round a good spin. There was one just like it in the park of my small New York State town. Thank you, James and Mary. All the best with the keynote address, Mary, at the re-launching of Ruth Suckow's new novel.
Thank you Mary. I didn’t know about Ruth Suckow until a mutual friend introduced her to me last summer. This is a wonderful little story and I love the short recorded piece. The exhibit is scheduled for our library in Atlantic in 2025.