Mountain Path does not fall into the sentimental tradition of most mountain fiction up to that time…. Mountain Path is the story of an outsider who comes into the mountains with little or no background for understanding the people and their ways…. [The plot] is interesting enough; but it is not really the crux of the novel. On the contrary, the plot exists primarily to provide continuity for the presentation of a gallery of mountain people and, indeed, of a whole way of life. (p. 45)

[The Dollmaker's] depiction of family life—the entangled bonds between parents and children, brothers and sisters—is unparalleled in modern American fiction. Especially affecting is the loving relationship between mother and daughter shared by Arnow's heroine, Gertie, and five-year-old Cassie. Skillfully and movingly the novel depicts fictional children as original and as realistic as any child the reader has known. It also makes the joys and the pains of motherhood as heartbreak...

Usually categorized as naturalistic fiction, Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker (1954) may be considered more fruitfully within the context of heightened realism. Beneath the deceptively simple surface of its narrative lies a selectivity and shaping that transcends the reportorial naturalistic method. The journey which the novel describes of Gertie Nevels and her family from the Kentucky mountains to Detroit is an archetypal one: from pastoral to urban setting and specifically a literal and metaphorical...

… Dramatizing her primary theme of Kentucky hill people struggling to maintain their integrity amid family and community pressures, Hunter's Horn equals The Dollmaker in its distinctive characters and its forceful scenes. Hunter's Horn is unusual for juxtaposing raucous, pungent humor with uncompromising depictions of the prejudices and cruelties that constrict lives. The hero, Nunn Ballew, husband, father of five, and owner of a dilapidated farm, neglects his family responsibilities to...