Caroline Miller

Caroline Miller won the Pulitzer Prize and France’s Prix Femina for her first novel, Lamb in His Bosom (1933). Interestingly, the book is still in print today.

Her main character, Cean, is but a teenager and is pregnant. She is bitten by a rattlesnake and she has been listening to old wives’ tales about being scared while pregnant. Here is a portion of her inner thoughts.

Excerpt from ‘Lamb in His Bosom’, by Caroline Miller:

‘As she listened, Cean was afraid to tell her mother of her fears that were born out of the words and grew, all in a moment, to horrible, quivering things that would move as her child moved. She could not tell of the rattlesnake, nor of her feeling when the little calf was knocked in the head, a feeling of tears running bitterly down inside from her eyes and her throat, a feeling of bleeding slowly and helplessly inside herself.’

Caroline Miller wrote only one other novel, and it did not achieve the literary success of  ’Lamb in His Bosom’.  She didn’t attend college, but she did marry her high school English professor and most likely he encouraged her writing.

The style of this book is simple, but moving.  Ms. Miller was inspired to write it when she realized one day that, while she was having difficulty managing just a few children and a home,  her mother and grandmother had managed families of a dozen children, farmed, maintained the home, and kept a positive attitude.  She began to interview older women and listen to their stories, and from them, this tale of frontier life emerged.

When I began to write my novel, I thought often about this book, but realized that today’s reader is so far removed from the past that they wouldn’t appreciate the simplicity of the style.  I think it is our loss that we don’t revere our history more in this country.