The Black Soil by Josephin Donovan was written in 1930 and portrays the life of an Irish farming family in Iowa, USA. The events in the book are set in the background of the lavish and beautiful plains of Iowa, and the title of the book The Black Soil refers to good quality farmland found in this area, the land for which people traveled many miles, and had to suffer and battle endless obstacles.
The main characters of the book – the Connor family – are hard-working people who strive to make a leaving and provide a better future for their children. They are, however, are not the only settlers in the area. Through the intriguing story of their lives, we get a glimpse of diverse and rich settler culture where nations and countries mixed, mingled, and learned to coexist on the same patch of land.
This fact reflects one of the main themes of The Black Soil: the little town in which The Connors live is a reflection of the whole country, its diversity, its uniqueness, its hard-working people. Through the lives of a seemingly small group of people in a seemingly small area, we can observe the development of the American dream, American values, and American brave spirit.
Intertwined with this theme is the theme of immigrants in the United States in the early years. The book provides a deep insight into a pursuit for happiness that many embarked on in search of a better life and a better future for their family. Although the main characters only migrated from another location within the country, both Nell and Tim come from immigrant families that left their homes a while ago and traveled to the distant land that seemed magical and promising in hopes to fulfill their ambitions.
Donovan vividly portrays the difficult life of the settlers discussing the theme of disillusion and disappointment of the dreams that the settlers cherished traveling to the new location. The embodiment of these disappointments in the book is the couple that comes to the Connor family house at the very beginning of their new life – the man who lost his wife and a little child that no one cared for after her mother died.
It should be noted, however, that the theme of disillusion is at the same time opposed by the theme of celebration of life that is portrayed through the further destiny of the little girl Sheila who continues to live with the Connor family and at the end of the book embarks on her own journey of life.
The black soil of Iowa on which the Connor family lives and farms in this book represents not simply a fertile piece of land for harvesting crops, but the whole of the country of the United States. Envisioned by many as a country of freedom, democracy, and endless opportunity, just like the black soil of Iowa, the United States “could grow anything”, and people who earned fortunes in the United States, just like the hard-working people in the book, often do not possess anything more than “a kind heart and a good sense of humor”.
In conclusion, The Black Soil by Josephine Donovan is a great portrait of American life in the early settler years. Through the micro-world of the Connor family, it represents lives, aspirations, achievements, and failures of the whole nation of that period in the history of the United States. Despite all the ordeals of life that the Connors goes through as the story progresses, the book is ultimately optimistic and insists that the future holds good things for the Connors, as well as for everyone around them despite the difficult times through which they are all passing.