‘Miss Anna’s Asleep’ by Jesse Stuart

Miss Anna’s Asleep by Jesse Stuart, 1956

The magic trick:

Sweetness, simplicity, purity – but not with a lightweight plot

I hope you’ve been following along with our Jesse Stuart Week. I’m not sure they’re all in print anymore, but they should be. True 20th century treasures.

So, one of the key components of the previous Stuart features has been a lightness of touch, a simplicity of narrative, and a purity of heart. These are stories that take you to a world where things don’t seem so bad. And some of that, to be honest, is the fact that a lot of the stories have silly plots with silly stakes and happy endings.

Read individually, they might seem a bit frivolous. Taken as a whole, they combine to create a thoughtful, inspiring worldview.

But now we come to the end of the week, the end of the run, and the end of the lightweight content.

This is a powerhouse story of heavyweight issues. You still see the sweetness and the simple storytelling and the purity of heart. But now we don’t have a happy ending. We don’t have silly stakes. The result is a truly beautiful and memorable story.

And that’s quite a trick on Stuart’s part.

The selection:

She had taught hundreds and hundreds that had moved away. But of the town’s population of 2300, she had taught four out of every five of those under 56. A half century had passed since Miss Anna had started teaching first grade in the Landsburg City Schools. She was then a brown-haired and brown-eyed girl of 17.

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