State Fair--1911 (Paperback)

This is the story of a woman no longer young, who lives as a poor-relation on a farm belonging to distant relatives. Lonely and unloved, she has become painfully shy, excessively timid, unnaturally subservient, talks very little if at all, and exhibits all the symptoms of what we would call deep depression. When the family she lives with takes off for the big State Fair, she is left alone to take care of things at the farm. Enter a man, tall, handsome and enigmatic, with whom she, unsurprisingly, falls in love. He is just passing through, he says, on his way to seek his truths whatever they may be, but needs to stop off from time to time, to find work to keep him going. He recognizes the roots of her shrinking away from everyone and everything, and knows that it is fear. Intrigued, he stays around to observe her emergence from it, but will not allow himself to control or manipulate her in any way. This is the story of the outcome. Improbable it may seem, but remember, this took place in 1911. Attitudes were different then, but a woman's heart was still as vulnerable.