What is a summary of The Yearling?

Answer 1

This is a tale spun in post-Civil War Florida. It is the tale of a family who carve a home out of the wild. It is the tale of a boy and the incredible relationship he has with his father. It is the tale of a man who cheerfully struggles to help his wife return to the world of living people after her long grief. It is the tale of a boy and his yearling fawn as they romp through the idylls of springtime. It is the tale of how hardship and responsibility can create a coming-of-age, so that the boy is a yearling no more. The Yearling is all of these things. As a child, I read everything that pertained to the child, Jody. I felt the warmth of his kinship with his father. I understood his need for wandering and romping, and his fascination with the peace of the woods. I shared his fascination with the crippled and eccentric Fodderwing, a boy who was at one with the wild creatures. I felt his yearning for something of his own to care for and befriend. I frolicked with Jody and his fawn through the dappled sunlight and open fields. I puzzled at his Ma's somberness, like a flowerbed all dried up. The same fire burned within me as he jealously guarded his fawn and contradicted accusations of the damage it had done. I struggled alongside him when he saved the farm from ruin while his father was recovering from an accident.

I mourned in fury and disbelief when he had to be separated from his beloved fawn - I was sure there was another way. Now I read with the heart of a woman, and I ache with Orrie Baxter's sorrow at the loss of so many children. I echo her fear as she fiercely guards her last yearling from all harm, at the same time afraid to love him, afraid to hope too much, afraid to live once more. I marvel at the extraordinary Penny Baxter. Despite so much sadness to come up smiling - to be so just, so caring, so diplomatic, so gentle, and yet so firm - all the while, never losing the mischief and the sparkle of the eye that make life something to be enjoyed. Penny Baxter is the man any child would want as a father, any woman would want as a husband, and any man would want to become. The Yearling is a love story - not in the traditional sense of that phrase, but a tale that truly demonstrates what love should be, how it should act, and how it can bind people together in a bond that cannot be broken by adversity or worn by time.