Sourland — Rocky Farm Studio Books

Sourland FARM

Sourland Farm answers the question, “What if the same personalities and circumstances occurred in our society?” It is a retelling of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which is considered one of the greatest Victorian Gothic novels in the English canon.

Sourland Farm moves the setting to 200 years later and 5,000 miles away, taking place between 1969 through 2002 on the Sourland Mountain of New Jersey.

Emily Brontë’s provocative story of the Earnshaws and the Lintons, two northern English families torn apart by violent emotions in the late 1700’s, still intrigues readers over a hundred and fifty years after its publication. When Brontë published Wuthering Heights, many readers and critics were shocked at the violent, cruel, and grotesque events of the novel, as well as the fact that the orphan Heathcliff cheated and fought to come out on top, to rise above his circumstances.

Some reviews on Wuthering Heights at the time of its publication were not flattering. The Examiner in 1848 called it “a strange book… wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable; and the people who make up the drama… are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.” Graham’s Lady’s Magazine in 1848 further opined that the novel was “a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.”

Heathcliff, to this day, is one of the best-known characters in English literature, and Catherine Earnshaw’s tormented choice between two lovers retains its appeal for the modern reader. The novel’s highly ambivalent representations of domesticity, child-rearing, its characters and their actions, and the intrigue of Heathcliff’s origins made for an irresistible “retelling” project.

Analogous in every sense, Sourland Farm experiments with the relevance of pathologies and societal mindsets, then and now, providing material for both the reader and for students of Victorian Studies.

Mid-Century American English has been chosen to translate each passage and transform meaning and message for the contemporary reader from YA to Adult—critical for the story line, and scene and character descriptions.

Setting Sourland Farm in my neighborhood felt like a natural choice, since it allowed me to map my own personal world onto the scenes in the novel. The history and lore of the Sourland Mountain dates back to the Revolutionary War, and further, to when it was Lenni Lenape land. Later the mountain became a backwoods refuge for “miscegenation” and life-styles incongruous to the surrounding communities, as written about in the 1880 New York Times article, “Barbarism in New-Jersey,“ further making it a perfect setting for events and behaviors to play out that otherwise would feel improbable. Ghost stories abound, as well. Interwoven into Sourland Farm are references to these local histories and hauntings, making it an even more satisfying substitute for Emily’s moors.

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Publishers’ comments below (each followed by a “but”)

Broadview Press: “Your retelling has academic relevance, and I think there may be increasing demand for paraphrased or simplified versions of classic texts.”

Princeton University Press: “A promising manuscript”

Writers’ House: “Your work has many charms”

Early Reader: “Mary’s preface and introduction provide clear windows into the vast challenges of modernizing a dark tale by 150-200 years. Her conversion is absolutely plausible, in part because she lives on the Sourland Mountain, widely regarded when I lived there in the ‘80s just as she describes: natural, semi-tamed, eerie, perhaps dangerous —a perfect setting. This is a tale of flawed people living in rural isolation in that setting, where mental health was unevenly understood and not necessarily valued. Love had to coexist with ignorance, naiveté, neglect, illness, jealousy, greed, bitterness, and obsession. Disagreements were often strikingly frank and crossed generations. As Mary asks in her introduction, “Is (Brontë ) portraying mental illness or the very essence of human nature itself, as natural as the wind and rain?” Employing a NYC tenant new to the mountain to prompt the housekeeper to relate the complex story is a realistic device, mirroring the plot line in Wuthering Heights. Considerable skill was required to keep the manifold characters, traumas, motivations, flashbacks, joys and interwoven tales flowing smoothly. Sourland Farm is a beautifully written, provocative story.”

Pete Jaques, author of Shaking Hands with Tomorrow: An Independent School Leader’s Hard-Earned Lessons