Literature
Harriette Arnow
1908–1986 · novelist, historian
Kentucky-born novelist whose The Dollmaker, drawn from her years in wartime Detroit public housing, is the classic novel of the Appalachian migration to the Motor City.
- Born
Wayne County, Kentucky- Died
Washtenaw County, Michigan
aged 77- Birth name
- Harriette Louisa Simpson
- Also known as
- Harriette Simpson Arnow
- Detroit years
- 1944–1950
- Field
- Literature
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Arnow grew up in the Cumberland country of Kentucky and was already a published novelist when, in 1944, she and her husband, the journalist Harold Arnow, moved with their children into a public housing project for defense workers in Detroit. Like thousands of Southern migrants, they lived amid the crowding, noise and tensions of the wartime boomtown until 1950, when they bought land near Ann Arbor. Out of that experience came The Dollmaker (1954), the story of Gertie Nevels, a Kentucky woman who follows her husband to the Detroit factories and struggles to keep her family and her soul intact in a cramped project apartment. It was a finalist for the National Book Award, a bestseller, and was filmed for television in 1984 with Jane Fonda. She spent the rest of her life in Washtenaw County.
Highlights
- The Dollmaker (1954), set in wartime Detroit; National Book Award finalist
- Lived in Detroit defense-worker public housing, 1944–1950
- The Dollmaker TV film (1984) earned Jane Fonda an Emmy
- Historical works Seedtime on the Cumberland and Flowering of the Cumberland