"A New Home is a vivid contribution to a new king of narrative developed during the antebellum period, ethnographic fiction. Kirkland highlights the importance and the drama of local practices and everyday life in Montacute. She traces the way two groups of settlers slowly adjust to each other--the old hands and the newcomers from the East. Dramatizing differences of class and culture, she also shows how the groups finally form a genuine community and a new diverse culture. Kirkland also gives ethnographic fiction an original twist: she satirizes the provincialism and the rigidity of both groups of settlers."--Publisher's description from paperback back cover.