A valley in Maine between two hills that the people called mountains cradled the little community. Settlers had come there in Indian times and the families were mostly of Scottish and English stock--until the Frenchmen came down from the north to cut the timber.
The world of the valley was a wonderland to young Althea. It was filled with sights and sounds and smells that could set her dancing with delight. And sometimes, too, it was filled with the emotions of a grown-up world beyond her understanding, one that could bring the tears hotly to her eyes. There was also Owen.
Owen was older, in many ways an unusual boy, and he preferred her company to that of any of the others. It was he who taught her the meaning of the valley world, and the world outside as well. And when the half-wild French-Canadian woodsmen of the Luneau families had stripped the forests of three farms for the sawmill, and then suddenly came into control of Elder Perry's land, it was Owen who helped bring the valley people and the Luneaus together in the crisis that followed.
History was to hustle the little community along an entirely unexpected course, but the people of the valley--Althea and Owen; the majestic Elder; the Old Head, patriarch of the Luneaus, who had "too much heart, too much tongue"; the unforgettable teacher, Mrs. Carter; indomitable old Miss Hester; the mysterious Daley tribe; and all the rest--clung to the best of the past, and their traditions helped to protect them against the inroads of change.
In Sing Out the Glory, the valley and its people come vividly and warmly to life before the reader's eyes. The simple blessings of a Maine childhood--the smell of hundred-leaf roses, or the sight of home from a snowy hilltop--are intensely and excitingly real.
One feels strongly the impact on the valley of the war, or of the closing of the banks. The love of a boy for a girl, of a farmer for his land, of the people for their nation, are all protrayed with a beauty and feeling that make Sing Out the Glory one of Gladys Hast Carroll's finest novels.
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