Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah, Plain and Tall is a short children's novel by Patricia MacLachlan, published in 1985 and the first of a series about the Witting family. It is told in the plain first-person voice of Anna, the older child, who reports what she sees on the prairie without explaining more than a child would, and the chapters are short enough that the seasons of a farm year give the book its shape.

The story starts with a letter. Jacob Witting, a widower with two children and a farm to run, advertises for a wife, and Sarah Wheaton of Maine answers. When she arrives she can drive a wagon and shear sheep in a way the neighbours have not seen before, and she cannot get used to a place where the wind carries no sound of the sea.

The tension of the book is small and exact: will she stay, or will she go back to Maine? Anna and Caleb watch for signs, and Sarah's choice turns on whether she can make a life in a country that feels wrong to her at first. MacLachlan leaves the farm work and the weather to carry the feeling, and the last chapter is quiet.