Tillie, a Mennonite Maid

Tillie is a Mennonite farmer's daughter who wants to read, and reading is forbidden - by her father, by the sect, and by everyone who has authority over a girl in that country. Martin grew up among the Pennsylvania Dutch and spent thirty novels showing them without the postcard sentiment; this 1904 book made her name and was resented locally for exactly what it says about the hold of the sects. Forty-five paintings of farm buildings and fields, among them a young girl reading, by Charles Towne and Johan Christian Dahl, run through the text as a visual counterpart to Tillie's rural world.