A White Heron and Other Stories

By: Sarah Orne Jewett

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Susan Hanfield, Gabrielle de Cuir

Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

“It seemed … she never had been alive … before she came to live at the farm.”

Despite having published in the Atlantic Monthly before, and being close friends with both the editor and his wife, Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” was not considered suitable for the magazine. Fortunately for readers (and now listeners), Jewett had faith in her story; she even wrote to the editor’s wife in a letter, “What shall I do with my ‘White Heron’ now she is written? She isn’t a very good magazine story, but I love her, and I mean to keep her for the beginning of my next book.” And so this classic collection, A White Heron and Other Stories, came to be!

The nine stories in this collection encapsulate Jewett’s love and reverence for nature; her affinity for understanding complex, nuanced, and often strained relationships; and—just as her father encouraged her—her ability to write not about things, but to “write the things themselves just as they are.”

Full Contents:

“A White Heron”
“The Gray Man”
“Farmer Finch”
“Marsh Rosemary”
“The Dulham Ladies”
“A Business Man”
“Mary and Martha”
“The News from Petersham”
“The Two Browns”

Originally published in 1886.

Public Domain (P)2023 by Blackstone Publishing

Just Beautiful

I love Sarah Oren Jewett. Her writing is beautiful, in a way only the very best writers' work is beautiful. It successfully brings the reader into the beauty and love within the story, the beauty and love within himself, and the beauty and love of a historical time. Sarah Orne Jewett should be so much better know than she is! I try to read her "Country of the Pointed Firs" at least once a year. I gave this production only four stars because, like any set of short stories, some are more successful than others. But even the least successful here are heads and shoulders above most. This rendition has multiple readers, which I expected to dislike, but which, in this case, worked fine, because all were calm, clear, and, (with one short exception), just read the book instead of acting as if they would prefer to be on stage. It is a very good production.