Some Help along the Way

Long an admirer of Jean George's books for children, I was eager to read her autobiography, Journey Inward. I hoped to find behind-the-scenes details about such favorite books as My Side of the Mountain, Going to the Sun, and Julie of the Wolves. They're there—I wasn't disappointed—as are stories about several of her other books. Her nature and animal descriptions also captivated me; hikers and animal lovers will greatly enjoy this aspect of George's autobiography. Better yet is the amazingly personal information about the lively, interesting personality I always sensed behind these books, particularly the story of George's personal odyssey from devoted, subservient wife to self-confident, competent mother/single parent/supporter of three. Similar journeys are being undertaken by a lot of people these days, and George's comments about her own journey are intelligent, humorous, enlightening, and even consoling.

Journey Inward takes us immediately to one of the centers of George's life: nature. During a childhood with an entomologist-naturalist father, a supportive mother, and twin brothers Frank and John Craighead (now world authorities on the habits of grizzly bears), throughout a marriage to conservationist-ecologist-ornithologist John George, and in her own work as a writer, George has observed with an intent and careful eye the cycles and patterns of nature. She has often written about animals she has kept as pets. Journey Inward contains funny stories, and stories of awe, about the mysterious behavior of Lotor the racoon and her two kits; Song Sparrows Able, Peggy and Charlie; Meph, the skunk; and New York, the talking crow. George describes these domesticated animals, and also bears and wolves, expertly and with great love, and her ability to apply some of what she has learned about animals to humans is one of the strengths of her fiction and her life.

The first few chapters of Journey Inward are about Jean George's life with John George, her husband from 1944 to 1963. Their first year together he worked on his Ph.D. thesis and they lived (in all kinds of weather!) in a tent "in the field" so he could collect his data. Together they wrote several books on animals, and she did the illustrating. Later, he began teaching at Vassar, and Jean George tells wonderful stories about their life there. (Their exotic pets didn't always fit in smoothly with Vassar life.) They had two children by this time: John was teaching and still working on his thesis. But trouble began to brew as time passed and John did not finish the thesis. She tried to help him get along with it, organizing his work and typing for him, and meanwhile, postponing her own writing.

The crisis in their marriage sharpened when John's contract was not renewed at Vassar, and as the divergences in their thinking about how to raise children became even more acute. These chapters must have been painful to write, and in writing them George also faced an ethical problem, for her ex-husband and her children are very much alive. Yet because the failure of the marriage was all-important in her development as both a person and a writer, she faces them. She does so with both tact and honesty, a rare combination, and the telling of her difficulties and her way out of them—through professional help—will touch many who have been down the same path.

Raising three children as a single parent, and supporting them as a free-lance writer, George still found time for family fun. Their summers were often unorthodox; she says she and her children felt as if there were a crucial factor missing because they were a fatherless family, but as she describes their adventures, it is clear that this family had a great deal of warmth and love, more so than many so-called "intact" families. Her strategies for dealing with teen crises involving sexual knowledge, drug use and runaways are thought provoking, too; these chapters will interest adolescents and parents alike.

All in...