Melanie Gideon:
American author of the novels, Did I Say You Could Go, Valley of the Moon and Wife 22, as well as the memoir The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After. Her books have been translated into 30 languages. She was born and raised in Rhode Island and now lives in the Bay Area.
It was August, and the fields were high with corn.
This is a ‘descriptive literary sentence, not really a proverb or common saying.
– Literal meaning:
‘It is late summer, and the corn has grown tall in the fields’.
– Implied mood:
‘It suggests ‘warmth, abundance, ripeness, rural quiet, and the fullness of late summer’.
– Symbolic meaning:
‘August and tall corn can also imply a moment just before change — harvest is coming, summer is ending, and something may be about to happen..
✍️ Origin and Author:
The line is commonly attributed to Melanie Gideon, an American novelist and memoirist.
It appears to be from her novel “Valley of the Moon”.
📝 Is it a “saying”?
Not exactly. It is better described as:
– a ‘literary quote’
– an ‘opening-style descriptive line’
– a piece of ‘scene-setting prose’
Rather than a traditional idiom, proverb, or folk saying.
