Tess of the Storm Country

Grace Miller White set this 1909 melodrama among the squatters who fished the shores near Ithaca, New York, a community the town’s respectable citizens preferred to ignore. Her heroine is Tessibel Skinner, a ragged, fierce, largely unschooled girl whose father Orn is jailed on a charge of murder. Left to fend for herself against poverty and the scorn of her neighbors, Tess finds unexpected tenderness through Frederick Graves, a young divinity student who teaches her to read and to pray while she waits for her Daddy to come home. The story turns on faith, class prejudice, and a secret that ties the fisherfolk to the college families on the hill. Hugely popular in its day, the book spawned a sequel and several film versions, including the 1914 silent that helped make Mary Pickford a star.