The Town, the third novel in Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, continues the story of frontier woman Sayward (née Luckett) Wheeler and her family.

The focus of this final book is on the dramatic changes to the town and region with rapid development and industrialization.

Sayward lives through the development of her Ohio Valley settlement into a thriving town, with a variety of businesses and industry.

Sayward's husband, Portius Wheeler, convinces her to give up their old log cabin and move into a fine new brick mansion house he builds in the downtown section of Americus.

Her father, Worth Luckett, had abandoned the family to live a hunter's life after his favorite child, Sulie, was lost in the forest.

Sayward and her remaining sister, Genny, travel to the Indiana town where Sulie resides and try to reconnect with her.

As Chancey grows older, he feels an increasing sense of separation from his family, and often clashes with his mother over their differing views on work and progress.

He becomes close friends with Rosa Tench, a girl from the poor side of town in whom he senses a kindred spirit.

When Rosa realizes that Chancey will never defy his family and take her away from Americus, she commits suicide with the same knife used to cut the balloon's tether.

He works as an editor of a newspaper, writing articles from a socialist point of view that criticize industrial progress and some prominent people in the state, especially members of his family.

Chancey returns in 1861 on the eve of the American Civil War (although the year is not given, the book refers to Union troops answering the call of their “backwoods president,” meaning Abraham Lincoln).

He recognizes that he will have to “ponder his own questions and travel his way alone.”[2] Richter conducted extensive research in order to convey the historic speech of the early 19th-century pioneers of the Ohio Valley, many of whom originally emigrated from Pennsylvania and the Upper South (for example, they referred to “trees” as “butts”).

Richter drew from his research in rare collections of old manuscripts, letters, and records that documented the speech of early 18th- and 19th-century residents.

In addition, he interviewed scholars and former neighbors of pioneer heritage whom he had known in his home state of Pennsylvania and in the Ohio Valley.

By this time, Sayward's husband, her children, and many of the newcomers to the town are better educated and have abandoned the old forms of expression.

The central character, Sayward Luckett Wheeler, contributes to the transformation of the frontier settlement founded by her father into a full-fledged town with a church, a school, frame and brick houses, businesses, and improvements such as roads, bridges, canals, a railroad, and a county courthouse – all within her lifespan of some eighty-odd years.

Although Sayward at first welcomes the development as a promise of prosperity and improved lives, by the end of the trilogy, she questions whether the rapid changes have fostered traits such as greed and laziness in the townspeople.

In the beginning, Sayward has an almost personal animosity toward the trees, because of the backbreaking labor they required as settlers struggled to clear the land for homes and farms.

Sayward believes that the original settlers built character by their hard work and persistence in the face of adversity.

If you made it easy for folks, it seemed like their hardihood had to pay for it.” [6]By comparison, her youngest son, Chancey, follows the Socialist beliefs of reformer Robert Owen.

He believes that the goal of the community should be sharing labor for the benefit of all, that progress means that work could be rewarding in itself, and there should not be wide separation of classes.