Mildred Walker

Mildred Walker (Schemm) (May 2, 1905 – May 27, 1998) was an American novelist who published 12 novels and was nominated for the National Book Award. She graduated from Wells College and from the University of Michigan. She was a faculty member at Wells College from 1955 to 1968. Walker died in 1998 in Portland, Oregon.

Biography

Mildred Walker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 2, 1905. Her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a school teacher. She and her family spent summers at a vacation home in Grafton, Vermont. In 1926 she graduated magna cum laude in literature from Wells College in Aurora, New York. In 1927 she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan where she met and married Dr. Ferdinand Schemm. In 1964 she traveled to Sicily, Italy on sabbatical. Pearson contends that Walker was greatly influenced by her exposure to and exploration of a diversity of literature during her tenure at Wells College. Her later works contain themes of "economic needs, of warfare, of women's changing roles, of evolving technology, and of movement and displacement". Pearson writes: "...today, her novels remain relevant and infused with the energy of compromise and the language of movement: her modernism".

Other critics suggest that the decline in popularity of her later works was due to heavy handed literary influences and that they lack the "freshness and spontaneity" so appealing in her earlier works. Her novels, populated with noble characters and written with "ladylike" dignity, have not always remained as relevant to the modern reader who began to value rebellious, boundary-pushing characters and themes towards the end of Walker's career.

Works

Novels Fireweed, 1934 Light from Arcturus, 1935 Dr. Norton's Wife, 1938 The Brewers' Big Horses, 1940 Unless the Wind Turns, 1941 Winter Wheat, 1944 The Quarry, 1947 Medical Meeting, 1949 The Southwest Corner, 1951 The Curlew's Cry, 1955 The Body of a Young Man, 1960 If a Lion Could Talk, 1970 The Orange Tree, 2006

Children's books A Piece of the World, 1972