Grandma Called it Carnal

The is mainly the story of the Miss Damon's New England grandmother, Grandma Griswold, who fought the twentieth century and all its innovations single-handed--and won. A disciple of Thoreau, she believed in plain living and high thinking, exalting the soul by mortifying the flesh. While raising the two little girls orphaned by her daughter's death, she became the focus of an unusual New England country childhood. She dominates the landscape of home, school, and play with a personality--which in Miss Damon's depiction of it walks with something of majesty--that emerges as a figure of significance in the pattern of American life. Stern, rigid, and intolerant, set in her ways, just and self-denying and noble all at once, she deserves a wide circle of acquaintances.