The Runaway

<div class=Section1><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>Now this just isn't- Mrs. Klein you don't- youcan't.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>I know you love it here butyou're not being clear.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>I mean with thedeath and all and the little ones.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>Butthink about it.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>Think of thenumbers.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>He pointed at her brownaccount book and wearily took off his glasses.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>Your family is just scratching just scratching along.<spanstyle=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>The families before you had the sametroubles.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>They were hard workers toobut the land isn't rich not like what's surrounding you: too many rocks toosteep of a grade.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>I may not own thisplace but I reckon I've worked here longer than anybody else has probablysince the Indians gave it up.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>I sayyou've had bum luck in picking your business.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>And now without a man--</span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>It is turn of the century America in Upstate NewYork.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>In the fertile lands of theregion a new widow with three young children must run their farm alone defyingsexual expectations of the time.<span style=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>Fromthis seed the Klein family's story branches into a journey of growth thattouches sometimes violently their community with its servants wealthylandowners and farmers eventually bringing them into the larger world of thecity with its tenement slums and mansions immigrants and laborers.<spanstyle=mso-spacerun: yes> </span>The Runaway is a tightly knit study of atime when economic racial and sexual mores experienced a radical revolutionas well as a moving piece on human relations as illuminating to the presentday as it is to the past.</span></p></div>