Woman of the Earth — A.J. Cronin

No wonder the Scotch countryside was interested in the schoolmaster's pretty, new assistant. Twenty years before, her mother had left the place under a cloud. Is it true, the old saying, “Like father, like son”? Then must it also be true, they asked, Like mother, like daughter? Originally published as a complete novella in Cosmopolitan magazine (November 1933), WOMAN OF THE EARTH is A. J. Cronin's poignant story of Davie, a lame-footed schoolmaster; Jess, his vibrant young assistant, whose unwed mother fled in disgrace from their very town a generation earlier; farmer Rob, his hale and hearty brother; and Ailie, Rob's wife and a “woman of the earth.”