The Field House

Born to an illustrious New England family, Rachel Field was a National Book Award-winning novelist, a Newbery Medal-winning children’s writer, a poet, playwright, and rising Hollywood success in the early twentieth century. Behind the scenes, her personal life was fraught with heartbreak, secret shame, and insecurity. Love came late to Rachel. Then her light was abruptly extinguished at the age of forty-seven, when she died suddenly at the pinnacle of her personal happiness and professional acclaim.

Fifty years later, Robin Clifford Wood stepped onto the sagging floorboards of Rachel’s long-neglected home on a tiny island off the coast of Maine and began dredging up Rachel’s history. She was determined to answer the questions that filled the house’s every crevice: Who was this vibrant woman whose very name entrances those who still remember her work? What was the source of her heartbreak? Why is the bright light of her words and her presence so largely forgotten today? In this compelling blend of biography and memoir, Wood addresses letters to Rachel Field that precede each chapter, revealing an uncanny sisterhood between two women who never meet, yet they transform each other’s destinies.

The discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with Robin Clifford Wood.

Book club questions for The Field House by Robin Clifford Wood

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Had you ever heard of Rachel Field or her work before you read The Field House? Are you interested in reading Rachel’s work, now that you know more about her?

One of Robin Clifford Wood’s aims in writing the book was to cast a more positive, inspiring light over the tragedy of Rachel’s death. Did she succeed? How did you feel about the book’s ending? sad? thoughtful? uplifted? Can you explain your takeaway?

Rachel Field struggled profoundly with her physical appearance. Do you feel her experience was a product of her time, or a continuing challenge for contemporary women?

What new insights (if any) did Rachel’s story offer you about her particular period in history (eg: societal hierarchies, cultural and gender norms, the publishing world of the 1920s, 1930s Hollywood, the early “rusticators” of the Maine coast)? How have things changed? How have they stayed the same?

How would you characterize the relationship between Robin and Rachel? What are your thoughts about the possibilities of a “friendship” with someone no longer living? Have you ever experienced anything like this in your own life?

For you, what effect did Robin’s letters to Rachel have on the book? Did you find them a distraction or an enhancement to the story?

Hand-written letters have become a rarity. In what ways will archival projects like The Field House change in the future, when archival collections are all electronic? Did the book inspire you to write a letter by hand to someone?

Do you have aspirations that have lingered with you since childhood that you still hope to achieve some day? What are they? What has stopped you from following that “call?”

Mentors can make all the difference in our lives. In The Field House, Robin’s mentor was a woman who was no longer living, and yet she still had a profound influence on the trajectory of Robin’s life. Can you think of people from the past who have moved you in some way?

Part of Robin’s gratitude to Rachel Field was that Rachel validated the choices she had made in her life, even though that meant delaying one calling for a long time in deference to another. Do you have a calling? More than one? Have you heeded those calls? Why or why not?

The Field House Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the The Field House discussion questions

[Wood's] passionate prose and carefully curated primary sources will certainly convince readers that Field is not a writer to overlook.
An eloquent, detailed tribute to a less well-known but inspiring author."

--Kirkus Reviews

“I just finished this lovely book and feel richer for it. Meticulously researched and deeply felt, THE FIELD HOUSE is a compelling hybrid of biography and memoir. An exploration of the life and legacy of novelist-poet Rachel Field, it is interwoven with personal reflections that reveal the influence of Field’s work ethic and passion on the biographer’s life. This book is also a meditation on the nature of creativity and a love letter to a house on Sutton Island in Maine once owned by Field and now by Wood. For both writers, the house became a touchstone and a haven, a place to reflect and rejuvenate and create.”

- #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline

“Before I read this book, I had never known Rachel Field. And now? I’ll never forget her.”

--Allen Adams, The Maine Edge

“I suspect this extraordinary book will be one of the best you read this year. It will surely be one of mine.”

--Mary Jo Doig, Story Circle Network

"This elegant hybrid of biography and memoir introduced me to Rachel Field and Robin Clifford Wood, whose lives, separated by generations, uncannily twine. Compelling, instructive, inspiring, and beautifully written. I was greatly moved."

-- Award-winning author Monica Wood, author of The One-in-a-million Boy, When We Were the Kennedys, and Any Bitter Thing.

"Robin Clifford Wood has combined immense archival material and keen insights to create a detailed and enchanting biography of Rachel Field. The author's skillful use of granular sources, paired with her sophisticated wordsmithing, has produced a book that is both informative and lyrical. Readers will also appreciate the author's parallel discussion of the writing process itself - an articulate discussion that will undoubtedly seem familiar to anyone who has ever struggled to discover and tell a story.
This is a delight to read."
--Historian Jacalyn Eddy, author of Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children's Book Publishing, 1919-1939.

I highly recommend Robin Clifford Wood’s enchanting The Field House, her intensely personal reckoning with the life and work of the nearly forgotten author Rachel Field. Famous in her lifetime for bestselling novels for adults and children, winner of Newbery and National Book Awards, Field lived less than half a century but left plenty of evidence for her biographer to explore—in archives across the country, and in the Maine island cottage they both called home in a curious twist of fate that enabled this charming and heartfelt narrative.

-- Pulitzer Prize-winner Megan Marshall, author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast.

"This wonderful book--based on meticulously thorough, devoted research--is a lovingly tender, wise, and judicious account of Rachel Field and her world. Its unusual blend of memoir and biography helps to illuminate the life, even as a poignant dialogue between the author and her subject unfolds. Truly, a tour-de-force!"
--Benson Bobrick, award-winning author of Angel in the Whirlwind and Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired.

This fascinating book about the life of Newbery Medal-winning author Rachel Field lives at the intersection of seamless research and rich personal reflection. Robin Clifford Wood offers such insightful, knowing details about Field’s writing life and her personal attachment to Maine, that we come to feel we are reading the account of a close friend. Wonderfully executed, The Field House renders Field's extraordinary life with great empathy and beautiful, lucid prose.

--Critically acclaimed author Susan Conley, author of Landslide, Elsey Come Home, The Foremost Good Fortune, and Paris Was the Place.

The Field House lures readers to ‘a long-abandoned, wood-framed house on an island off the coast of Maine.’ When author Robin Clifford Wood buys a summer cottage belonging to famed poet and award-winning author Rachel Field, Wood is haunted by Field’s sudden death, her untold stories. Discovering treasures and clues Field left behind, Wood weaves a stunning and intimate portrait of a once-prized American writer and poet who deserves to be remembered.

-- Pulitzer-Prize winner Barbara Walsh, author of August Gale: A Father and Daughter’s Journey into the Storm and Sammy in the Sky

"Robin Clifford Wood's biography of Rachel Field is a beautiful and thorough history of an artist and writer with important connections to Maine. In THE FIELD HOUSE, Wood doesn't back away from the complexity of Field's life: self-doubt, aspirations, flaws, triumphs, unrequited loves, and final losses. And yet, this book is also a clear-eyed survey of the literary world of the 1920s and 30s, Maine island life, and a woman who, transcending gender roles and notions of physical beauty, offered the world a gift that, because of Wood's deeply personal book, will hopefully never be forgotten.”

-- Jaed Coffin, author of Roughhouse Friday and A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants