This is a story of how even with the best of intentions,
forcing another to warp their life in order to fit a prevailing mold has
unforeseen as well as unfortunate consequences. Lue Gim Gong comes to America
from China in the second half of the nineteenth century. All his life he’s been
interested in breeding plants, but that passion doesn’t help the boy named
Double Brilliance fit in. Growing flowers is seen as a foolish pastime in rural
China, and when his uncle gives him a chance to go to Gold Mountain—the
U.S.—the innocent boy leaves his plants behind, only to land in Massachusetts
under the tutelage of a laudanum-addicted Christian spinster. Gim Gong does his
best to conform to Fanny’s expectations, not supporting his striking brethren,
converting to Christianity, and working in her father’s garden for nothing.
Fanny revels in teaching Lue, her budding career in education cut short by her
father’s demands years before. Lue becomes her creature, spending hours
discussing horticulture with her, halting the payments he’d been sending home
to China, and moving to Florida to continue his experiments. He develops Lue
Gim Gong oranges although he never profits from them, and is left out of Fanny’s
will, and can’t have the woman he wants. In China, his family has their own
twisting story, beset by ghosts and jealousy-inspired, spiteful relatives. Lue
Gim Gong always comes around to looking on the positive side, and goes on to
develop more new citrus strains. There are lots of well-researched details in
this book, but the fictional biography McCunn tells of one immigrant’s fight to
become a master horticulturist is not a happy story.
A slim memoir of Tobias’s early years on the prairie,Thunder and Mud is listed as a children's book, a look at a time gone by, brimming with the minutiae of rural life in homesteading days and a family bonded by love and hard work.
Esther Hobart Morris:
The Unembellished Story of the Nation’s First Female Judge by Kathryn Swim
Cummings
Although packed with historical details of the movements of
the famous South Pass City judge and what was occurring around her in
Sweetwater County, her homes in New York and Illinois, and the nation, as well
as pages of facts about all her relatives, the reader never really draws close
to Esther Hobart Morris. Less a failing of the author, I think it was
characteristic of the historical figure who came to be called the Mother of
Women’s Suffrage that few people really knew her beyond the myth that she
somehow stuffed forty people into her small log home to drink tea and twist the
arms of some male politicians until they promised to give women the vote in
Wyoming Territory. Like her doubtful conclusion that Sacagawea returned to the
Wind River Reservation and died there, this fabrication by Herman W. Nickerson
was amplified by Grace Raymond Hebard, who apparently desperately wanted some
female representation in a history told by males. But like the lore grown up
around cowboys, the West stands by its myths and Cummings is brave to attempt
debunking one of our favorites.
Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealth and the Remaking of the American West by Justin Farrel
This slim volume is a concise history illustrated with
photos, maps, and drawings. Published in 1979 and suitable for adults or even
middle grades, there’s a lot of information on a still little known American
minority packed in its pages.
I See by Your Outfit:
Historic Cowboy Gear of the Northern Plains by Tom Lindmier and Steve Mount
Gathering From the
Grassland: A Plains Journal by Linda M. Hasselstrom
A lavishly researched and illustrated history of the Western
cowboy, Lindmier and Mount separate fact from Hollywood and dime novel fiction
in the description of everything from cowboy clothing, cowboy and horse gear,
to ranch life and roundups. My only complaint with the book is that with all
the explanation, the authors sometimes lost track of the fact that not every
reader of this book is familiar with the subject, and didn’t explain an
esoteric term that, in my case at least, could have used a few words of
clarification.
Daughter of a Daughter
of a Queen by Sarah Bird
A white woman, Bird does a good job of finding a fictional
explanation of how a slave named Cathy Williams became a Buffalo Soldier named
William Cathay. Delving into Black/white, male/female, and U.S. Army/Native
American issues, the novel presents a portrait of a woman, granddaughter of a
captured African warrior queen, who refused to bow down and accept a role artificially
assigned to a Black woman.
Never having been to one of Hasselstrom’s writing retreats
but having heard much about her over the years, I was surprised to find that
through 320 pages and a year of journal entries of her life on the ranch and
what felt like intrusive delvings into the letters and journals of her parents,
in the end I should have been forewarned by her confession in the first entry
of the book that “I am wary of journals, even, or perhaps especially, my own.”
Some parts of the book shone, such as those dealing with the ecology of the land.
In many others, the author just seems tired and uncertain about the ultimate destiny
of the place she, childless and aging, fought so hard to keep.
Wolves of Eden by Kevin McCarthy
Three Irish
veterans, a Jew, and a noseless Indian prostitute meet up in the bloody West
following the bloody Civil War. Told in two voices, one a straight narrative
and one a confession written by one of the Irish men to the alcoholic Irish
superior officer sent to investigate the murder of a soulless post sutler and
his malicious wife in 1866 Dakota Territory, this is a story of how love (for a
brother, for a woman, or for a fellow soldier) endeavors to transcend the evils
of war, genocide, and the worst examples of how men deal with their fellow
human beings. Harrowing, gruesomely historically accurate, this book is not an
easy read, but it is a grippingly honest one.
Nighthawk Rising: A Biography of
Accused Cattle Rustler Queen Ann Bassett of Brown’s Park by Diana Allen Kouris
Called Queen
Ann because of her haughty demeanor, Ann Bassett and her siblings were raised
by their parents in remote Brown’s Park, Utah. Ann’s mother wanted to raise
cattle, and so the girls of the family were reared almost like cowboys when
they weren’t off to boarding school. In Butch Cassidy’s milieu and hunted by
the likes of the notorious Tom Horn, most small ranchers ended up branded
cattle rustlers as the big outfits tried to run them off the land the water.
From a time when maverick calves were considered fair game for anyone’s
branding iron to a time when the big ranchers overran and overgrazed the
countryside with cattle bearing their brand, it was difficult to keep up with
whose cows were whose on whose land. Some of what’s been written about Queen
Ann were attempts to shine a better light on the writer at her expense. Some of
it she owned up to later in life in her own unpublished autobiography. In
Nighthawk Rising, Diana Allen Kouris has tracked down many original sources of
material on Brown’s Park and its early denizens. Her extensively researched
book is a must read for outlaw fans, homesteader buffs, and women’s history enthusiasts.
The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook
Ostensibly a
testimony concerning the whereabouts of a missing accused Confederate murderer,
this quirky book is an intimate peek into the lives of two orphan children in
Texas. Benjamin Shreve, the narrator of the testimony, and his half black
sister Sam, are on the trail of the panther that killed Sam’s mother and
disfigured the girl’s face with deep claw marks. Single-minded about finding
and killing the panther, Sam leads her brother and others who get swept up in her
quest for vengeance on an ambitious chase after the big cat. Benjamin doesn’t
paint an attractive picture of Sam: she’s lazy, stubborn, and argumentative.
But she’s his sister, and that fact determines that he will help her no matter
what. The characters in the book, including Ben’s mare, are finely drawn, and
the reader is as helplessly drawn along in Sam’s quest as the others who
accompany her in her pursuit of the panther.
A Fence Around Her by Brigid Amos
This novel,
billed a “clean read” and aimed at young adults, certainly doesn’t shy away
from adult themes. Fourteen-year-old Ruthie has the care of her emotionally
fragile mother while her father is at work in the gold mine in Bodie,
California. A town on the way to bust, there are still a few diehards working
there, and a few strangers who land in town looking for an opportunity to make
their fortunes. From the very first, Ruthie doesn’t trust the sinister Tobias
Mortlock, although her mother seems fascinated by him. Her father seemingly
oblivious to the situation, it falls mainly to Ruthie to try to rescue her
mother, a painter and former prostitute miserable in the small town and certain
from the way the townspeople treat her that when she dies she won’t even be
allowed inside the fence surrounding their cemetery. The insertion of
Catholicism seems sort of pasted into the narrative although it does serve as a
vehicle for Ruthie to at least lay eyes on the boy she’s interested in until
they can meet and get past the town’s prejudices, and perhaps to help the book sell as a Christian romance. This is a readable historical
for Young Adult+ audiences.
My Heart Lies Here by Laurie Marr Wasmund
A novel
“about” the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado in 1913 between miners of many
nationalities joining the United Mine Workers, and the militias brought in to
break a strike that led to them trying to wipe out the determined miners and
their families who hung on, sheltered in numbered tents, over the course of a
brutal winter. But it’s the characters who make this story come to life,
Christian Scott and her brother Alex, the young woman Pearl who appears on
their doorstep and falls in love with Alex, and the handsome Cretan miner
Theros who captures Christian’s heart. As dogged as the miners are, spunky heroine Christian matches them in disposition. Whatever I expected of this story, it
wasn’t a romance. This book is so good it deserves a wider readership. I think
a different cover would help, one that reflects the fact that this is an absorbing
story about people as much as Colorado and union mining history.
Thousand Pieces of
Gold by Ruthanne Lum McCunn
I bought this book as a fictional companion to my book
club’s selection, the nonfiction Poker
Bride. After reading both, it is apparent the two authors came away with two
different pictures of the subject, Lalu Nathoy better known as Polly Bemis.
Sold by her father in China during a period of famine, Lalu begins her period
of slavery in a brothel. She is sold to a wealthy Chinese merchant in Warrens,
Idaho, and then won in a poker game by gambler and saloon owner Charlie Bemis.
Named Polly because all Chinese prostitutes were called Polly, Lalu and
Charlie’s story is framed as a love match by McCunn, although there was no
doubt a clear-eyed financial aspect to their relationship. Charlie owns Polly’s
boardinghouse, ostensibly because the Chinese weren’t allowed to own property
although they could take over panned-out mining claims. When Polly has to be
spirited away to protect her from deportation in one of the times of anti-Chinese
laws, Charlie marries her and takes her ten miles away in the wilderness to
homestead. There seem to be pieces missing in this fictional telling of
historical events, such as whether getting shot in the face had more to do with
Charlie’s move away from Warren than protecting Polly, and the perhaps
clear-eyed conclusion that as a gambler he wasn’t used to the hard labor
required of a homesteader and that Polly was willing to shoulder most of the
burden. Old documents such as deeds and marriage certificates leave much open to
interpretation, and there are only a few records of what happened in Polly’s
life and none to say why, so this probably idealistic telling of an Idaho
pioneer woman’s story turns out to be a heartwarming read.
The Time It Never Rained
by Elmer Kelton
Even to his 1950s contemporaries, Charlie Flagg is an
anachronism. Amid the longest Texas drought in memory, he alone stands on his
own two feet, refusing to take government handouts to save his cattle. Life is
hard, and the years of drought test the boundaries of what makes a man, what
makes a marriage, and what makes a family. This is a deeply researched and
deeply felt Western, a Western Heritage Spur Award winner.
You are Respectfully
Invited to Attend My Execution by Larry K. Brown
The first Sweetwater County Historical Museum history
reading club book selection, this nonfiction work details the crimes, captures
and deaths of men lawfully executed in Wyoming Territory. Sources are cited at
the end of each chapter dealing with a single criminal, and it becomes chillingly
obvious that the West attracted more than its share of murderous psychopaths.
Not much past the days of executions as public entertainment, Brown captures
the efforts made to lend dignity to the proceedings. But though it’s hard to
imagine nowadays that a murderer had the opportunity to send invitations to his
hanging, Brown uncovered the documents proving that once it was so.
Wyoming by JP
Gritton
I picked up this book for its title. Although the novel
doesn’t have much to do with Wyoming, it
does paint a portrait of a certain kind of Western man, one
who refuses to grow up and goes through life blaming everyone around him for
his lack of success. In a long train of misfortune made worse by bad decisions,
it becomes apparent even his ex-con brother is more mature than Shelley Cooper.
“You wait long enough, everybody will let you down.” Shelley lets down everyone
he knows, and it’s a depressing ride along with him to the end of this story.
The Last Midwife by
Sandra Dallas
The Glovemaker by Ann Weisgarber
A look at the survival tactics of outlaw polygamous Latter-day
Saints in 1888 Utah, the main character in this book, Deborah Tyler, teeters
between sympathy for the people involved and resistance against blind obedience
to contemporary and historical Mormon doctrine. Survivors in a harsh landscape,
the people of Junction, a metaphorical stand-in for the Church, must ultimately
decide whether to stay or to go.
The Mapmaker’s
Daughter by Katherine Nouri Hughes
Although my favorite historical novels are those that teach
me something I don’t know about people or places in time, I found this book
about a 16th century girl kidnapped from Venice who rises from the harem to
become a Sultan’s daughter-in-law, a Sultan’s wife, and a Sultan’s mother, slow
going and too unfamiliar to absorb. Told from her viewpoint as she lies dying,
the point of the book is mostly as unfathomable as the mechanics of the Ottoman
Empire she is trying to explain. What was the purpose of her extensive European
and Turkish education? The library she is bequeathed by her old teacher and
that she tries to bequeath her heirs, is destroyed. In the end, she realizes
she was merely the tool of the dead Suleiman the Great and his desire to avoid
civil war by murdering all except the winner of those who might vie for the
throne.
Blood of the Prophets:
Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Will Bagley
An exhaustively researched history of the Mormon Church and
the events and beliefs that led up to the slaughter of wagon train emigrants
traversing Utah in 1857, this book is a hard look at the nature of a religious
leader with feet of clay, the unquestioning obedience of such a man’s
followers, and the consequence of that man’s fiery rhetoric on a congregation
with a severe persecution complex. At almost 500 pages in hardback, be prepared
to pay attention because the reward for sticking with Bagley’s narrative is
great.
Settler’s Law by
D. H. Eraldi
I really liked this book about a “boy outlaw” who serves his
sentence and returns home to find squatters in his family’s cabin and his
mother and sister murdered. The only one of the stagecoach robber gang
surviving, Sett supposedly has knowledge of where the gold was hidden and in
danger not only from a Montana vigilante group but also from the murderers. An
abused half Blackfoot girl joins up with Sett because her dog likes him, hoping
he can show her the pass over the mountain to her people. The novel was
originally published by Berkeley, so it was hard for me to accept the easily
fixable errors in the ebook version: lightening for lightning, it’s as a possessive
of the pronoun, a jarring use of coolie for coulee, etc. A final edit would
have earned this Western five stars.
The Art of Love by
A. B. Michaels
A divorced woman and a man whose wife has disappeared meet
and fall in love in San Francisco following the Klondike Gold Rush. An
enjoyable historical romance with lots of period detail, although a bit
predictable.
The Kitchen Mistress by
Kathleen Shoop
Not too many references to the first two books in this
series, but enough to explain some of the odd relationships between the
characters in this one. In 1892 Katherine Arthur and her family are trying to
claw their way back to their former level of grandness, when they become
involved with Violet Pendergrass who’s trying in any manner she can to claw her
way to the top. Katherine, a seer, allows Violet to pull the wool over her eyes
a few too many times in her attempts to protect her family in a convoluted plot
about money, sex, and power.
Mashka by Sophia Gallegos
Much like Anne Frank’s story, this is the diary of a young
woman detailing how her hopes and longings for a bright future take flight while
she is physically held captive, prisoner to the stormy events of Europe at war.
Under the watch of Bolshevik soldiers, Grand Duchess Maria is reduced to
washing her family’s tattered laundry after they have lost almost everything to
the Revolution. The events leading to the murder of the entire Romanov family
are historical fact and Maria’s ultimate fate is as certain as Anne’s. But
still the reader is swept up in the daily events in the life of the doomed
heroine, one who resembles any other young woman who has let her feelings free
and fallen in love.
A Perfect Little World;
Nothing to See Here; The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
I read a favorable review of The Family Fang, voted Best Book of the Year by Time, Amazon, People, Salon, and Esquire,
and so bought three Kevin Wilson novels on that basis. The three books share a
common theme: how being a parent can end up either suffocating or freeing the
children of the relationship. The difference in the three novels is just how
weird the adults might be, from really strange in The Family Fang, to largely indifferent parents who turn to a
caring stranger in Nothing to See Here,
to oddly normal-seeming parents who agree to a ten-year commitment living under
a microscope in a damaged doctor’s version of Utopia in A Perfect Little World. Kevin Wilson takes the common fear of a
parent—wondering whether what mom and dad do during the years their child lives
under their domination will damage or nurture the offspring—and turns it nightmarish.
In Wilson’s estimation, the line between the two results is sometimes blurred.
A Free State by
Tom Piazza
Living in one area for an entire lifetime can prove both restricting
and intensifying to a person’s understanding of history. A life spent in the
Rocky Mountain West means I’ve imbibed lots of cowboy, outlaw, Native American,
and Manifest Destiny history. As I get older, I find myself wanting to broaden
my perspective by searching out novels that will show me things I don’t know. I
don’t know much about the South. What I do know is that to this day, every once
in a while a prominent person is shamed in the media for wearing blackface. But
beyond the obvious boneheadedness of famous folks photographed mocking the
history of black people, I didn’t have a clue about the deeper significance of the
origin of blackface, the minstrel shows. By contrast, the author Tom Piazza, with
his extensive background in New Orleans, is more than capable of illuminating
the history of minstrelsy. In addition to the chilling details of slavery in
the South, Piazza spins a fascinating story of the stubborn obliviousness of
the North in the years preceding the Civil War, when even there the law bars black
men from appearing onstage. Instead white men with burnt cork applied to their
faces perform slavery-inspired songs extolling the supposed virtues of plantation
life. In A Free State one black man
escapes slavery with his banjo, and he’s such a good performer he’s hired to
perform onstage in Philadelphia despite the law. In the gradual peeling back of
some of the scales of racial illiteracy from the minstrel troupe’s eyes, the reader
also is schooled in the situation that led to the War and also in how a black
man is required to contort himself in order to survive in a culture determined to
rob him, in one way or another, of his very identity.
According to Kate
by Chris Enss
In this work of nonfiction, Chris Enss uses the handwritten
notes, letters, and interviews of Maria Izabella Magdolna, aka Mary Katharine
Horony, aka Kate Fisher, aka Kate Elder, aka Mrs. John Henry Holliday, aka Big
Nose Kate, aka Mary K. Cummings, to paint the facts of the life of the woman
who will always be tied to the history of Doc Holliday, the Earps, and the
shootout at the O.K. Corral. Kate left only her notes because she couldn’t
convince a publisher to give her the money she thought her tale deserved. So
until now, her portrait has largely been tinted in unflattering colors by historians
influenced by the story co-written by Wyatt Earp. In trying to make this a
modern story told with the modern sensibilities of a sex worker who chooses her
own destiny, Enss performs some contortions in an attempt to avoid calling Kate
a whore and her places of employment whorehouses. I wondered if Kate herself
would have taken such delicate steps to ensure her own reputation if it would
have helped to sell her book. It was also a bit awkward in places trying to
wedge Kate into venues such as opera houses contemporary to her but
undocumented that she actually attended. Otherwise, this small volume is a
competent telling of the facts of one woman’s life in the Old West.
The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
The packhorse librarian program was a Works Progress Administration initiative that ensured literacy to the mountain people of Appalachia between 1935 and 1943. There is a lot of background detail about the changing relationships between men and women, mountaintop mining, and surviving the Depression. Along with growing a library in Kentucky, the women characters in this historical novel grow in knowledge, courage, maturity, and new relationships. A wonderful tale skillfully told.
The packhorse librarian program was a Works Progress Administration initiative that ensured literacy to the mountain people of Appalachia between 1935 and 1943. There is a lot of background detail about the changing relationships between men and women, mountaintop mining, and surviving the Depression. Along with growing a library in Kentucky, the women characters in this historical novel grow in knowledge, courage, maturity, and new relationships. A wonderful tale skillfully told.
The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard
After reading this book, I think a more apt title would have been Atomic City since its focus is not really on the girls who worked on the secret World War Two project but more on the Tennessee government project itself. None of the characters with the exception of the black workers were portrayed sympathetically, although it’s understandable that the overwhelming constant reminders to keep tight lips might have something to do with suppressing the emotional impact of the story, keeping the reader at a distance as the truth was kept from the workers.
After reading this book, I think a more apt title would have been Atomic City since its focus is not really on the girls who worked on the secret World War Two project but more on the Tennessee government project itself. None of the characters with the exception of the black workers were portrayed sympathetically, although it’s understandable that the overwhelming constant reminders to keep tight lips might have something to do with suppressing the emotional impact of the story, keeping the reader at a distance as the truth was kept from the workers.
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
As if survival in backwoods Alaska isn’t hard enough for the unprepared, the author drops teenager Leni and her mother into the wilderness with an abusive, paranoid, alcoholic, former prisoner of war Vietnam veteran. Amazingly, Leni comes to love Alaska. It’s the only place her family has “settled” for long, and it’s the only place she has ever truly fit in. But they can’t ever let their guard down. In this book, Alaska is always ready to kill the unwary. While reading the novel, it’s obvious there isn’t going to be much of a starry-eyed happy ending. The author just keeps piling on precarious situations until the question becomes, who or what will try to destroy whom or what first?
This book imparts a lot of historic research about the characters who populated, or in some cases passed through, the locales of this south central Wyoming county. From mountain men to outlaws to politicians to a woman photographer, a woman hanged for cattle rustling, and a female physician who clung to the skullcap of executed criminal Big Nose George, there were some mighty interesting—if peculiar—folks living there.
The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch
Once Scott Zesch came upon the lonely grave of his great-great-great uncle Adolph Korn, he couldn’t rest until he uncovered the story of the boy who had been abducted at ten years old. Weaving the biographies of several Texas children abducted and traded around Indian Country in the years preceding Adolph’s disappearance in 1870, Zesch finds that most if not all of these child captives didn’t actually want to be rescued, and had an extremely difficult time adapting to “civilized” life if they were ransomed away from the tribes. It’s a compelling history, but Zesch has no more success than anyone else in answering precisely how little German immigrant children so quickly became Comanches.
Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr by Thomas Fox Averill
If the reader weren’t warned that this story is fiction, it would be easy to believe it a true account of an abolitionist woman from Arkansas who moves to the free territory of Kansas, only to be widowed when her husband is murdered by Quantrill’s Raiders. Set adrift, Nell must find her own way in life and becomes fascinated by the creatures preserved in the Permian rocks making up the walls of her home’s foundation. Seeking more knowledge, she dares the disapproval of her neighbors to walk the muddy riverbanks, and eventually to start seeking out those educated in the lore of fossils in order to expand her own understanding. A finalist in the 2019 WILLA Awards from Women Writing the West, this book richly rewards the reader.
If the reader weren’t warned that this story is fiction, it would be easy to believe it a true account of an abolitionist woman from Arkansas who moves to the free territory of Kansas, only to be widowed when her husband is murdered by Quantrill’s Raiders. Set adrift, Nell must find her own way in life and becomes fascinated by the creatures preserved in the Permian rocks making up the walls of her home’s foundation. Seeking more knowledge, she dares the disapproval of her neighbors to walk the muddy riverbanks, and eventually to start seeking out those educated in the lore of fossils in order to expand her own understanding. A finalist in the 2019 WILLA Awards from Women Writing the West, this book richly rewards the reader.
Cherokee America by Margaret Venable
My review: The wealthy farm family at the center of this post-Civil War story is part Cherokee and part white, so the tale takes some unexpected turns for the reader steeped in white culture. There is also an examination of post-slavery acceptance of black men’s wandering affections, which seemed another oblique commentary on American history. A major focus on young men’s penises, which I expect is a lot more accepted in Native life, made me think those organs should have been characters in the story, although there are already many of those. Some of the action resembles a reworking of Native stories from the viewpoint of mixed heritage people. The pace of this story is slow and there are a lot of characters to follow. Not recommended for everyone, but for readers who want a distinct viewpoint on a historical period.
My review: The wealthy farm family at the center of this post-Civil War story is part Cherokee and part white, so the tale takes some unexpected turns for the reader steeped in white culture. There is also an examination of post-slavery acceptance of black men’s wandering affections, which seemed another oblique commentary on American history. A major focus on young men’s penises, which I expect is a lot more accepted in Native life, made me think those organs should have been characters in the story, although there are already many of those. Some of the action resembles a reworking of Native stories from the viewpoint of mixed heritage people. The pace of this story is slow and there are a lot of characters to follow. Not recommended for everyone, but for readers who want a distinct viewpoint on a historical period.
Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor by Rebecca Rosenberg
A rags-to-riches-to-rags story of the legendary Baby Doe Tabor, second wife of Colorado’s silver king, Horace Tabor. The details of Horace’s chafing at the ordinary life, his profligacy as a silver miner, and his fascination for Baby Doe is one thread of the story. The other is men’s fascination with Baby Doe. Even determined to make it on her own, she can’t resist falling in love with a man twice her age with his big dreams and deep pockets. Even though familiar with the basic points of the story, this was a fascinating look at the promise and sometimes dashed expectations of the West through the vagaries of fate through one woman’s life.
A rags-to-riches-to-rags story of the legendary Baby Doe Tabor, second wife of Colorado’s silver king, Horace Tabor. The details of Horace’s chafing at the ordinary life, his profligacy as a silver miner, and his fascination for Baby Doe is one thread of the story. The other is men’s fascination with Baby Doe. Even determined to make it on her own, she can’t resist falling in love with a man twice her age with his big dreams and deep pockets. Even though familiar with the basic points of the story, this was a fascinating look at the promise and sometimes dashed expectations of the West through the vagaries of fate through one woman’s life.
The Bermondsey Poisoner by Emily Organ
Once again Victorian era newspaper reporter Penny Green finds herself involved in racing to solve the mystery of the story she’s reporting, while trying to deny her attraction to the detective she keeps bumping into along the way, James Blakely. A good female sleuth novel with lots of period detail.
Once again Victorian era newspaper reporter Penny Green finds herself involved in racing to solve the mystery of the story she’s reporting, while trying to deny her attraction to the detective she keeps bumping into along the way, James Blakely. A good female sleuth novel with lots of period detail.
A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn
A deft hand at portraying a delightful Victorian woman lepidopterist determined to travel the world and sample all its delights, the author also gives readers layers of mystery along with a dark, compelling hero. A fun read.
A deft hand at portraying a delightful Victorian woman lepidopterist determined to travel the world and sample all its delights, the author also gives readers layers of mystery along with a dark, compelling hero. A fun read.
Bird Woman (Sacajawea) the Guide of Lewis and Clark: Her Own Story Now Given First to the World by James Willard Schultz
This 1918 book tells the story of the Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark’s Corp of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean in 1804-06. The basic outline is well known: a young captive sold to a French Canadian voyageur leads an expedition across uncharted territory with a baby in her arms, at several points saving the entire company. The book’s shortcoming is that the end relies entirely on Grace Hebard’s contention that Sacajawea came to the Wind River reservation and died there an old woman. The historical record indicates Sacajawea died in 1812 at Fort Manuel in present day South Dakota. So although there’s no indication of it in this book, the argument goes on.
This 1918 book tells the story of the Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark’s Corp of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean in 1804-06. The basic outline is well known: a young captive sold to a French Canadian voyageur leads an expedition across uncharted territory with a baby in her arms, at several points saving the entire company. The book’s shortcoming is that the end relies entirely on Grace Hebard’s contention that Sacajawea came to the Wind River reservation and died there an old woman. The historical record indicates Sacajawea died in 1812 at Fort Manuel in present day South Dakota. So although there’s no indication of it in this book, the argument goes on.
I like nothing so much as a historical novel that can teach me something new. Such is Barbara Hambly’s portrayal of 1833 New Orleans, where Benjamin January, who has been living the life of a respected doctor in Paris, returns to New Orleans and its multitude of repressive layers of social connections. When a beautiful octoroon woman is murdered, there is no more handy suspect than the free black man who seems to know too much about some things and not enough to protect himself. An absorbing look into a different time and place in US history.
Not Just Any Man: Novels of Old New Mexico, Volume 1 by Loretta Miles Tollefson
I bought this book because I tried to read Volume 2 in the series as a stand-alone, and had trouble connecting the dots of the storyline of that book. The major portion of this book is a competent portrayal of the fur trapping business in nuevomexico under a young Mexican government. The protagonist, Gerald Locke Jr., a mixed race man passing as white, has escaped the problems of trying to live in Missouri as a free black amidst increasingly stringent slavery laws. He can’t figure out how else to get the grubstake he needs to obtain some land of his own to farm except to learn to trap beaver. His first winter trapping is an exercise in patience, putting up with the endless chatter of the loquacious Bill Williams. The second winter he joins a trapping company, learning more about the trade, some aspects of which he definitely doesn’t like. Along the way he rediscovers a beautiful mountain valley where he begins to dream of settling. He also makes a mortal enemy of a disturbed man who seizes any excuse to make trouble for Gerald and others, especially those he views as easy prey, male or female. In Taos, Gerald meets 15-year-old Suzanna Peabody, and they develop an enduring attraction. Suzanna has been schooled in Latin, not domestic duties, although she does like to garden. Gerald, even after Suzanna’s father has given permission for them to marry, continues to conceal the truth of his ancestry. Her godfather, Ramón Chavez, and Gerald form a partnership, and the three ascend the mountains to Gerald’s dream valley to begin their next adventure. I had a few problems with this book. No matter the probable custom that women marry young in nuevomexico, Suzanna’s father had grand plans for her. So it seemed incongruous that he would just allow her to marry a man she barely knew and head off for what he must have known would be a tough life for even the hardiest pioneer woman, even though Ramón agrees to do all the cooking—a commitment I had to wonder if the man would come to regret. And about Ramón: Suzanna’s godfather was Catholic, surely, and she Protestant? Was that even possible? Another instance that caused me to stop reading and question was Ramón’s casual observance that there was gold in the Moreno valley streams, a factoid that just seemed tossed into the story and was never picked up again, especially since I read Volume 2 first and there was no mention of gold in that book either. For the most part I enjoyed this book, although I could foresee big trouble ahead for these characters, given their differences, perhaps even bigger trouble than most pioneers had to face.
Not My Father’s House: Novels of Old New Mexico, Volume 2 by Loretta Miles Tollefson
In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Spain has ceded its New World Territory to Mexico, trade along the Santa Fe Trail has opened and all are welcome—if those such as fur trappers agree to pay a tax to the Mexican government on any goods produced on Mexican territory. Any arable land around the settlements has all been claimed, and after trying and discarding the beaver trapping life it’s difficult for a free man of color in nuevomexico to make a living at his preferred occupation of farming. Add in deciding to settle in a beautiful but remote and cold mountain valley, Indians who still claim that land as theirs, an older Mexican man who has been promised a full share in the rewards of a farm partnership, a young wife taught nothing much of practical value but steeped in a useless Latin education, plus a deranged trapper with a grudge against the settlers, and the problems just keep mounting. As I got deeper into the book, I wondered how the husband, Gerald Locke Jr., and his partner, Ramón Chavez, managed to put up with young Suzanna’s moods and temper. Ramón has to abandon his own work to cook all the meals, and Gerald must maintain a grim silence, if he can’t manage an actual cheerful demeanor, in the face of his wife’s growing unhappiness as winter descends and she finds herself pregnant in a dark little cabin. I kept having to remind myself as I read that she was 16 years old and probably suffering from what today we would identify as SAD and postpartum depression. But it was a difficult path for this reader to walk with her. I also had questions about the writing that were unanswerable without having read the first in this series, Not Just Any Man: Novels of Old New Mexico, Volume 1. How did these so-different people end up together? Why did Suzanna’s father give her permission to marry at her young age and especially after having spoiled her for anything but a studious life? How did Gerald and Ramón, depicted as mostly clear-eyed characters, expect such an ill-equipped little girl to handle life in a dark, snowy, remote location, actually named the Moreno (black) valley, with just them for company? Did they have any idea of Suzanna’s emotional problems before they were stranded in the mountains by the weather? Did Suzanna really not have a clue concerning her husband’s true ancestry? And what version of mad compulsion could cause even a villain as dark as Enoch Jones to stalk this family for such an extended period of time? I thought as I read that even far advanced in pregnancy, there was nothing to prevent Suzanna returning to her father in Taos for the baby’s birth, on a travois if necessary. As evidenced by her repeated stubborn efforts to plant corn in the mountains, deep down did she really wish to finally do the hard thing—grow up—and not take the easy path once again by giving in and returning to her father’s house? This is a well-researched novel. The details about early New Mexico are fascinating. The characters are well-rounded, and some of the extremely difficult situations facing early Western settlers become evident. But without giving away any details, I felt the ending seemed abrupt and sort of pasted on the book. I would caution readers not to try and read this book as a stand-alone. It truly is Volume 2 in the Novels of Old New Mexico, a continuation of the lives of the characters begun in Volume 1. I look forward to reading the planned Volume 3 in the series, where I trust the author will resolve all my questions.
In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Spain has ceded its New World Territory to Mexico, trade along the Santa Fe Trail has opened and all are welcome—if those such as fur trappers agree to pay a tax to the Mexican government on any goods produced on Mexican territory. Any arable land around the settlements has all been claimed, and after trying and discarding the beaver trapping life it’s difficult for a free man of color in nuevomexico to make a living at his preferred occupation of farming. Add in deciding to settle in a beautiful but remote and cold mountain valley, Indians who still claim that land as theirs, an older Mexican man who has been promised a full share in the rewards of a farm partnership, a young wife taught nothing much of practical value but steeped in a useless Latin education, plus a deranged trapper with a grudge against the settlers, and the problems just keep mounting. As I got deeper into the book, I wondered how the husband, Gerald Locke Jr., and his partner, Ramón Chavez, managed to put up with young Suzanna’s moods and temper. Ramón has to abandon his own work to cook all the meals, and Gerald must maintain a grim silence, if he can’t manage an actual cheerful demeanor, in the face of his wife’s growing unhappiness as winter descends and she finds herself pregnant in a dark little cabin. I kept having to remind myself as I read that she was 16 years old and probably suffering from what today we would identify as SAD and postpartum depression. But it was a difficult path for this reader to walk with her. I also had questions about the writing that were unanswerable without having read the first in this series, Not Just Any Man: Novels of Old New Mexico, Volume 1. How did these so-different people end up together? Why did Suzanna’s father give her permission to marry at her young age and especially after having spoiled her for anything but a studious life? How did Gerald and Ramón, depicted as mostly clear-eyed characters, expect such an ill-equipped little girl to handle life in a dark, snowy, remote location, actually named the Moreno (black) valley, with just them for company? Did they have any idea of Suzanna’s emotional problems before they were stranded in the mountains by the weather? Did Suzanna really not have a clue concerning her husband’s true ancestry? And what version of mad compulsion could cause even a villain as dark as Enoch Jones to stalk this family for such an extended period of time? I thought as I read that even far advanced in pregnancy, there was nothing to prevent Suzanna returning to her father in Taos for the baby’s birth, on a travois if necessary. As evidenced by her repeated stubborn efforts to plant corn in the mountains, deep down did she really wish to finally do the hard thing—grow up—and not take the easy path once again by giving in and returning to her father’s house? This is a well-researched novel. The details about early New Mexico are fascinating. The characters are well-rounded, and some of the extremely difficult situations facing early Western settlers become evident. But without giving away any details, I felt the ending seemed abrupt and sort of pasted on the book. I would caution readers not to try and read this book as a stand-alone. It truly is Volume 2 in the Novels of Old New Mexico, a continuation of the lives of the characters begun in Volume 1. I look forward to reading the planned Volume 3 in the series, where I trust the author will resolve all my questions.
Miss Royal's Mules by Irene Bennett Brown
Author Irene Bennett Brown has nailed the character of Jocelyn Belle Royal, the title character in Miss Royal’s Mules, a 24-year-old woman teetering on the thin edge of spinsterhood. Jocelyn is equal parts naïf and determined turn-of-the-20th-century modern woman, and the glimpses we get into the formation of this young woman’s character—from a surgically repaired deformity, to a difficult but much-loved grandmother, to a much-absent father who ultimately loses the farm Jocelyn spent years building up—make for fascinating reading. Jocey seldom has a bad word for anyone, which doesn’t prevent her from thinking the worst of some of the men in her lives as she tries to puzzle out what they might be up to now. And there’s much to puzzle an unworldly woman as the story progresses. Her boss, Whit Hanley, disappears from the mule drive Jocey insisted on joining as cook and wagon driver; his friend Sam Birdwhistle abandons her after the two of them finally succeed in getting the mules to their intended destination at Nickel Hill ranch; and her childhood friend Tosten Pladson turns up in a new guise as a handsome rodeo rider and Western artist named Pete. I much enjoyed this novel, with a couple of minor caveats: some of the external historical events seem uncomfortably wedged into the story, and the blurb on the back cover of the book would have done better with more hints of what’s inside instead of broad swathes of the plot. But the story itself is a welcome addition to the historical genre.
This 2002 novel is a piece of the story of the Civil War I had not seen closely examined in fiction before. Were Southern women imprisoned by Union forces? How would a former belle, daughter of a judge and a teacher who reads law books and tries to maintain neutrality as the war waxes and wanes around them, cope with being arrested and detained in a federal prison, accused of aiding Rebel spies? Each chapter begins with snippets of historical accounts of the war, and interspersed throughout are sharply drawn portraits of the senselessness and cruelty of men who learn to kill. So when heroine Adair Colley finds love in the prison camp, can she believe anything will ever come of her promise to a Union officer? Even after she escapes, can she find her way back home and ever hope anything might be the way it used to be? An absorbing novel.
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles
The lives of a freed black man, his wife and children, a Quaker Indian Agency employee, and some groups of Kiowa and Comanche intersect in Texas near the end of the Civil War in this 2009 novel. The situation for these people becomes very rapidly very dire. Quite a few Goodreads reviewers said they couldn't finish this book because of the violence. The language of the poet author is lyrical, even sometimes when describing horrific scenes of death and mutilation. Every character is drawn fine; there's no question of the weight of anyone's background, their preconceived notions, or motives for their actions. They're on a collision course, and the only question becomes, Will any of them survive? This isn't a pretty book or a comforting book. It is a book that makes readers pull back the curtain to examine history a bit more closely, a book that forces us to relinquish some of the gauzy myths surrounding white settlement of the West.
The lives of a freed black man, his wife and children, a Quaker Indian Agency employee, and some groups of Kiowa and Comanche intersect in Texas near the end of the Civil War in this 2009 novel. The situation for these people becomes very rapidly very dire. Quite a few Goodreads reviewers said they couldn't finish this book because of the violence. The language of the poet author is lyrical, even sometimes when describing horrific scenes of death and mutilation. Every character is drawn fine; there's no question of the weight of anyone's background, their preconceived notions, or motives for their actions. They're on a collision course, and the only question becomes, Will any of them survive? This isn't a pretty book or a comforting book. It is a book that makes readers pull back the curtain to examine history a bit more closely, a book that forces us to relinquish some of the gauzy myths surrounding white settlement of the West.
Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles
This Depression Texas novel, published in 2007, follows the fortunes of the women of the Stoddard family as they try various means of just staying alive, from learning to drive a tractor to betting on horses to investing in long-shot oil wells. After following gambler and oilfield freighter Jack Stoddard from one strike to another, the women move to Elizabeth Stoddard's family farm, which she has built up in her memories as a refuge. What the Stoddards find is a deserted house almost falling down and neglected fields overgrown with brush. But what Stoddards don't do is give up, and they fight on through trials ranging from drought to accidents to dust storms. This character-driven novel, like an old country song, is a portrait of hard times and the people who don’t give up hope.
This Depression Texas novel, published in 2007, follows the fortunes of the women of the Stoddard family as they try various means of just staying alive, from learning to drive a tractor to betting on horses to investing in long-shot oil wells. After following gambler and oilfield freighter Jack Stoddard from one strike to another, the women move to Elizabeth Stoddard's family farm, which she has built up in her memories as a refuge. What the Stoddards find is a deserted house almost falling down and neglected fields overgrown with brush. But what Stoddards don't do is give up, and they fight on through trials ranging from drought to accidents to dust storms. This character-driven novel, like an old country song, is a portrait of hard times and the people who don’t give up hope.
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
It took a while to raise the same interest in this 2016 Jiles novel as in the others of her previous historical works. But once reeled in by the story of an old former newspaperman and a young girl reluctant to be rescued from the Kiowas, the reader is truly hooked. Captain Kidd, who makes a living traveling around Texas reading articles gleaned from different newspapers for a dime a head to assemblages of people in search of an evening's entertainment, accepts fifty dollars in gold to return Johanna Leonberger to her relatives after she spent four years in captivity. The journey of this old man and ten-year-old girl, across Texas as well as delving into their own personalities, makes for fascinating reading.
It took a while to raise the same interest in this 2016 Jiles novel as in the others of her previous historical works. But once reeled in by the story of an old former newspaperman and a young girl reluctant to be rescued from the Kiowas, the reader is truly hooked. Captain Kidd, who makes a living traveling around Texas reading articles gleaned from different newspapers for a dime a head to assemblages of people in search of an evening's entertainment, accepts fifty dollars in gold to return Johanna Leonberger to her relatives after she spent four years in captivity. The journey of this old man and ten-year-old girl, across Texas as well as delving into their own personalities, makes for fascinating reading.
These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 by Nancy E. Turner
When Sarah Prine's father takes it into his head to move his family from California to Arizona Territory, they become one of those involved in the westward migration who can't seem to settle but are always looking beyond the horizon for something easier or better or more lucrative than what they found at the last location. Sarah's diary details her personal growth against a big landscape of settlers, Indians, Mexicans, outlaws, soldiers, and various other characters. Sarah goes from being a girl on a wagon train to a wife and mother on a ranch made successful after years of hard work and determination. Through it all, the details of the struggles of everyday life shine against Sarah's lifelong goal of becoming educated.
When Sarah Prine's father takes it into his head to move his family from California to Arizona Territory, they become one of those involved in the westward migration who can't seem to settle but are always looking beyond the horizon for something easier or better or more lucrative than what they found at the last location. Sarah's diary details her personal growth against a big landscape of settlers, Indians, Mexicans, outlaws, soldiers, and various other characters. Sarah goes from being a girl on a wagon train to a wife and mother on a ranch made successful after years of hard work and determination. Through it all, the details of the struggles of everyday life shine against Sarah's lifelong goal of becoming educated.
The Star Garden: A Novel of Sarah Agnes Prine by Nancy E. Turner
This continuation of Sarah's diary covers the years 1906-1908. A mature woman in this novel, Sarah must contend with her grown children's love lives, the question of whether she wants to get romantically involved herself, her cattle getting rustled, a neighbor who was once a suitor since turned murderous, and an improbable semester spent studying at a college in Tucson. The characters' lives are all in the particulars of their losses and triumphs, and once again the author makes the reader step in to the story and care what happens.
This continuation of Sarah's diary covers the years 1906-1908. A mature woman in this novel, Sarah must contend with her grown children's love lives, the question of whether she wants to get romantically involved herself, her cattle getting rustled, a neighbor who was once a suitor since turned murderous, and an improbable semester spent studying at a college in Tucson. The characters' lives are all in the particulars of their losses and triumphs, and once again the author makes the reader step in to the story and care what happens.
The Beaten Territory by Randi Samuelson-Brown
Like Milana Marsenich's Copper Sky, this is a novel of a Western mining town and the people who populate the world beneath the surface prosperity. And it ain't a pretty picture. The Ryan family survives in Denver in the 1880s any way they can, as bordello owners, prostitutes, gamblers, and cheap watered booze suppliers. The trick is in not getting snared by whiskey, laudanum, or the opium offered by the Chinese. Into this world steps Pearl, daughter of deceased Claire Ryan, niece of Annie and her brothers Jim and John, fresh out of the Home of the Good Shepherd and welcome to join her cousins Julia and May by hooking to earn her keep. The Ryans get involved in some shady dealings courtesy of a crooked cop and a slumming society woman, and the nearest thing to a happy ending occurs when any of them merely survives to see another day.
Like Milana Marsenich's Copper Sky, this is a novel of a Western mining town and the people who populate the world beneath the surface prosperity. And it ain't a pretty picture. The Ryan family survives in Denver in the 1880s any way they can, as bordello owners, prostitutes, gamblers, and cheap watered booze suppliers. The trick is in not getting snared by whiskey, laudanum, or the opium offered by the Chinese. Into this world steps Pearl, daughter of deceased Claire Ryan, niece of Annie and her brothers Jim and John, fresh out of the Home of the Good Shepherd and welcome to join her cousins Julia and May by hooking to earn her keep. The Ryans get involved in some shady dealings courtesy of a crooked cop and a slumming society woman, and the nearest thing to a happy ending occurs when any of them merely survives to see another day.
And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander
I picked up this book at the Wyoming Writers Conference where Ms. Alexander and her author husband were session presenters. Although other American women authors must write about an English amateur sleuth in Victorian England, as an amateur reader of Victorian female sleuths I think she did a good job of always having her heroine remain in character. Lady Emily, although feeling constrained constantly by the mores of her times, and especially by her social climber mother, always finds a way to accomplish her goals as she inches toward the realization that the state of widowhood that by turns stifles her and frees her is no accident. But by the end of this novel I felt a bit stifled myself by the character of Lady Emily. I never did find the quality that made me empathize with her or her situation. I think there are 14 books in the series so far, but I only picked up one other to test Ms. Alexander's remark that her writing had improved over the years. And Only to Deceive was an interesting investment, although I doubt if I will buy the rest.
I picked up this book at the Wyoming Writers Conference where Ms. Alexander and her author husband were session presenters. Although other American women authors must write about an English amateur sleuth in Victorian England, as an amateur reader of Victorian female sleuths I think she did a good job of always having her heroine remain in character. Lady Emily, although feeling constrained constantly by the mores of her times, and especially by her social climber mother, always finds a way to accomplish her goals as she inches toward the realization that the state of widowhood that by turns stifles her and frees her is no accident. But by the end of this novel I felt a bit stifled myself by the character of Lady Emily. I never did find the quality that made me empathize with her or her situation. I think there are 14 books in the series so far, but I only picked up one other to test Ms. Alexander's remark that her writing had improved over the years. And Only to Deceive was an interesting investment, although I doubt if I will buy the rest.
March 28, 2019—I-80 has become a killing field. Outside of Green River lies a dead hawk in the median, striped tail feathers fluttering in the breeze. The death toll mounts near Evanston: many mule deer carcasses line the roadside, and the pronghorn count continues to rise from the Lyman exit westward. Especially near the Bear River exit, many antelope apparently tried to follow the plowed pavement to cross the interstate. Many failed. Speeding past in a vehicle at 75 miles an hour, it becomes difficult to differentiate all the brown bodies, to tell one species from another, but I could swear I also saw one coyote and one mountain lion lying lifeless beside the road. The snow is mostly still deep along the fences, but in one cleared patch there was a bunch of pronghorn, excellent runners but not good jumpers, bunching up against the wire and looking at each other while apparently trying to decide what to do next. Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates details the yearslong effort to map and document the movements of the last of the nation’s migrating wild herds. Wyoming is lucky in being one of the final mostly open landscapes, but housing developments, roads, oil and gas infrastructure, and even backcountry skiers along with other human disturbances, threaten to choke off the remaining segments of paths first documented as the transcontinental railroad sliced the unimaginably huge bison herd into north and south groups before people almost succeeded in exterminating them completely. There are several groups working to conserve the migration corridors, take down impassable fencing, as well as build tunnels and overpasses at key pavement points. For those interested—as all of us who live here should be—in the background, history, science, and some rays of hope for conserving Wyoming’s wild populations, this book is highly recommended.
The Swan Keeper by Milana Marsenich
Eleven-year-old Lillian Connelly’s name is a diminutive of the Greek “Elizabeth,” meaning God’s oath, or in the original Hebrew “Elisheva,” or my God is an oath. Throughout her tumultuous eleventh year, Lilly witnesses the deaths and injury of a flock of her beloved swans, the murder of her father, the brain injury of her mother, and the awakening of a deeper feeling for her childhood friend. She comes to realize the growing injury to herself that comes from the fact that no one believes her account of who is responsible for all the devastation. Throughout a long year where she comes to identify with one of the injured swans that also refuses to give up, Lilly must keep a stubborn, grownup faith in herself as she bit-by-bit uncovers photographic evidence left by her father, that her damaged mother has buried another man’s long history of inexplicable violence and crimes against man and nature. There is some beautiful writing in this story, and despite descriptions of the poverty of Lilly’s family there is also the richness of her family’s imaginative, poetic accounts of why she is and why things are. The pace of the book is a bit slow, but the reader has time to be drawn into the majesty of nature and Lilly’s Montana surroundings.
Eleven-year-old Lillian Connelly’s name is a diminutive of the Greek “Elizabeth,” meaning God’s oath, or in the original Hebrew “Elisheva,” or my God is an oath. Throughout her tumultuous eleventh year, Lilly witnesses the deaths and injury of a flock of her beloved swans, the murder of her father, the brain injury of her mother, and the awakening of a deeper feeling for her childhood friend. She comes to realize the growing injury to herself that comes from the fact that no one believes her account of who is responsible for all the devastation. Throughout a long year where she comes to identify with one of the injured swans that also refuses to give up, Lilly must keep a stubborn, grownup faith in herself as she bit-by-bit uncovers photographic evidence left by her father, that her damaged mother has buried another man’s long history of inexplicable violence and crimes against man and nature. There is some beautiful writing in this story, and despite descriptions of the poverty of Lilly’s family there is also the richness of her family’s imaginative, poetic accounts of why she is and why things are. The pace of the book is a bit slow, but the reader has time to be drawn into the majesty of nature and Lilly’s Montana surroundings.
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Living in the West, it has become more difficult to get out in the countryside and just enjoy the solitude. Oilfield roads and tracks scar the land everywhere, brown metal gas infrustructure is widespread, and even on the weekends when it should be quiet there’s never a moment when you don’t meet trucks coming at you on what used to be the back roads. When I moved briefly to Oregon and began looking into the history of the Northwest, one of the things that really struck me was reports of the incredulous reaction of the Natives to the absolute insane frenzy of the white men to harvest every single salmon in the Columbia. In Oregon it was also explained that the land has been logged off two and three times since white settlement, and all those Doug firs of identical height seeming to choke the hillsides were planted by logging companies to replace clearcuts. It still didn’t occur to me, until reading this book, that all of this rapacious behavior has been going on since the first Europeans landed here, and no matter what, is not likely to stop because as one of the ultimate characters in this epic family saga thinks, “they had been looking at human extinction.” This book is a masterpiece. All the characters are as fully drawn as the reader is, hurtling toward the end. Immerse yourself in this book. Learn the sad lesson the author teaches. Just don’t go looking for happily ever after here.
Living in the West, it has become more difficult to get out in the countryside and just enjoy the solitude. Oilfield roads and tracks scar the land everywhere, brown metal gas infrustructure is widespread, and even on the weekends when it should be quiet there’s never a moment when you don’t meet trucks coming at you on what used to be the back roads. When I moved briefly to Oregon and began looking into the history of the Northwest, one of the things that really struck me was reports of the incredulous reaction of the Natives to the absolute insane frenzy of the white men to harvest every single salmon in the Columbia. In Oregon it was also explained that the land has been logged off two and three times since white settlement, and all those Doug firs of identical height seeming to choke the hillsides were planted by logging companies to replace clearcuts. It still didn’t occur to me, until reading this book, that all of this rapacious behavior has been going on since the first Europeans landed here, and no matter what, is not likely to stop because as one of the ultimate characters in this epic family saga thinks, “they had been looking at human extinction.” This book is a masterpiece. All the characters are as fully drawn as the reader is, hurtling toward the end. Immerse yourself in this book. Learn the sad lesson the author teaches. Just don’t go looking for happily ever after here.
Copper Sky by Milana Marsenich
Coming from an immigrant coal miner background myself, I expected to find some similar points of reference in the copper mining town of early twentieth century Butte, Montana. There seem to be none. My grandparents came to a company town where night classes taught English and citizenship, the women competed for prizes in turning the desert into gardens that reminded them of their European homeland, and the second generation was Anglicized into model Americans with familiar names. Although it’s highly probable that the people who lived in the coal town of my childhood remember their youth through Mayberry-ized retellings that reinforce an impossibly rosy setting, nothing prepared me for the almost sci-fi dystopian setting of Copper Sky. People in this story are trapped in claustrophobic fates that resemble the twistings and turnings of a dark mine tunnel. The soil itself is poisoned, children are abandoned, women are imprisoned in prostitution and those who dream of a better life discouraged by a paternalistic society afraid to let them go, and men left with the choice of going to war or going to work down in the mines. The people in this story can’t admit the truth to themselves, and few can imagine even trying for a different life. Despite some poetic passages and the author’s surprise creative use of language, I found this a really difficult book to read. Nevertheless it’s compelling enough that I continued, and was rewarded in the end. The conclusion does rescue the narrative, like a ray of sunshine piercing the oppressive copper cloud.
Coming from an immigrant coal miner background myself, I expected to find some similar points of reference in the copper mining town of early twentieth century Butte, Montana. There seem to be none. My grandparents came to a company town where night classes taught English and citizenship, the women competed for prizes in turning the desert into gardens that reminded them of their European homeland, and the second generation was Anglicized into model Americans with familiar names. Although it’s highly probable that the people who lived in the coal town of my childhood remember their youth through Mayberry-ized retellings that reinforce an impossibly rosy setting, nothing prepared me for the almost sci-fi dystopian setting of Copper Sky. People in this story are trapped in claustrophobic fates that resemble the twistings and turnings of a dark mine tunnel. The soil itself is poisoned, children are abandoned, women are imprisoned in prostitution and those who dream of a better life discouraged by a paternalistic society afraid to let them go, and men left with the choice of going to war or going to work down in the mines. The people in this story can’t admit the truth to themselves, and few can imagine even trying for a different life. Despite some poetic passages and the author’s surprise creative use of language, I found this a really difficult book to read. Nevertheless it’s compelling enough that I continued, and was rewarded in the end. The conclusion does rescue the narrative, like a ray of sunshine piercing the oppressive copper cloud.
In just the few short years during and after the Civil War, members of the Hancock family are changed utterly. It was difficult to lay this book aside without finishing the entire 700+ pages. The author has so piercingly drawn his characters and their situations that the reader is drawn inside the story and only with utmost reluctance lets go. This novel is different from anything else this author has written in his wide and long career. If you’re familiar with his genre work, read it without preconceptions or expectations. Just read it. You’ll be richly rewarded.
I read this book expecting to be enchanted by the main character, the daughter of Byron and supposedly a genius in her own right. But between her mother’s control, society’s constraints, Ada’s poor health and her own reluctance to test the boundaries, I don’t think her expectations or my own were ever met. The descriptions of the times, the characters, their dress and manners were all fascinating after we get past the explanation of her early life and her mother’s bad experience with marriage. But ultimately the Enchantress herself failed to bewitch me.
Finding True Home (American Dream) by Heidi M. Thomas
Once again, Heidi Thomas mines her family’s history to fictionalize life in rural 20th century Montana. This particular story documents the tribulations of a German immigrant woman to fit in to a culture where she can’t seem to find her footing among her neighbors’ post-war prejudice, a husband unable to verbalize his feelings, and eventually three children very different in personality from her and from each other. Anna Moser and her American husband, Neil, are willing to face all the arduous work involved and any hardship nature or ranch life can throw at them, in order to hang onto the land. A child of undemonstrative parents, Anna tries to be the best parent she can with her own children, but as they grow up and away from her, over and over again Anna’s response is to clutch much too hard in an effort to keep them near.
Flight of the Hawk: The River (A Novel of the American West) by W. Michael GearIn this novel of the early Western fur trade, the mysterious John Tylor serves as the hook on which hangs all the adventures of Manuel Lisa’s company’s ascent of the Missouri. Who is John Tylor and why is he on the run? If he’s in hiding from someone or something, why does he use his own name? It comes to light that he isn’t very successful in running from the price on his head. He can’t hide the fact that he’s obviously educated, even if he is dressed in rags. Yet he fits in well with most of the voyageurs, and pulls his weight arduously poling or pulling Lisa’s boats up the Missouri. Is he perhaps a spy for the competition? It seems he knows his way around Indians, and has even spent time in Santa Fe. Tylor wants only to vanish into the wilderness. Can Tylor evade his pursuers? Lisa trust Tylor to put the company’s interests first? Flight of the Hawk is a thoroughly enjoyable novel of American history. My single concern, no fault of the author, was the poor copy editing of this work. Perhaps the publisher will take note, and that situation will improve with volumes Two and Three of The River trilogy.
I bought this book at a Wyoming Writers conference, along with another memoir, Lucy Moore's Into the Canyon, Seven Years in Navajo Country. The two books are similar in theme: a woman in a new relationship chooses to spend time in isolation from her larger culture while learning to survive and grow and learning to fit in to a smaller, closer-knit culture that's totally foreign to her. Not incidentally, a background theme of both stories is the idea of trust. Learning to trust and depend on others, sometimes for sheer survival, is a facet of the growth of the narrators. The love stories underlying the main narrative of "woman against nature" are just one of the joys of reading these books.
Goodnight, Oregon by B.K. Froman
Do you like Oregon, or quirky characters, or higher education? How about a story of the stories that bring about a young woman's growth from a childhood of rural struggle to the doors that open after a years-long endeavor to attain the degrees that ultimately make a reach for the stars possible? For Stiks (Sophia) Bolton, it's a journey peopled by those she loves, but doesn't always completely understand. After skipping two grades in elementary school, it's a rapid rise for a girl who doesn't always fit in. As she matures, she has to extend tolerance to those she lives with, studies with, learns from, and works alongside. Her light really begins to shine when she takes to the late night airwaves to explore some of the events that furnished the foundation for the life she's determinedly building. Stiks rarely does things the way society might approve, but somehow manages to find the way to come out a winner. This book grabs you early and doesn't let go. I was given Goodnight, Oregon for an honest review. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Do you like Oregon, or quirky characters, or higher education? How about a story of the stories that bring about a young woman's growth from a childhood of rural struggle to the doors that open after a years-long endeavor to attain the degrees that ultimately make a reach for the stars possible? For Stiks (Sophia) Bolton, it's a journey peopled by those she loves, but doesn't always completely understand. After skipping two grades in elementary school, it's a rapid rise for a girl who doesn't always fit in. As she matures, she has to extend tolerance to those she lives with, studies with, learns from, and works alongside. Her light really begins to shine when she takes to the late night airwaves to explore some of the events that furnished the foundation for the life she's determinedly building. Stiks rarely does things the way society might approve, but somehow manages to find the way to come out a winner. This book grabs you early and doesn't let go. I was given Goodnight, Oregon for an honest review. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
The characters in Walk the Promise Road embody the grit, determination, and willingness to adapt that spelled success for those seeking adventure and a new beginning in the West after leaving behind all that’s safe and familiar. Mary Rodgers poses as a wife so that she and her also-unmarried cousin can join a wagon train bound for Oregon. But the ruse that initially seemed so ingenious comes to spell trouble for Mary and her cousin Phillip —who is already promised to Laurel—as well as for Indian/white guide Luke Sayer, whose growing interest in Mary she can’t be seen to reciprocate without all sorts of trouble descending on them. In addition to her sensitive portrayal of the boundaries set by society on an unmarried woman and a man born of dual cultures, I especially appreciated author Anne Schroeder’s careful attention to accurate historical detail. I enjoyed sharing the journey with Mary and Luke while hoping they could find their happy ever at the end of the trail somewhere along the Willamette in Oregon.
Into the Canyon: Seven Years in Navajo Country by Lucy Moore
I bought this book at a Wyoming Writers conference, along with another memoir, Marjane Ambler's Yellowstone Has Teeth. The two books are similar in theme: a woman in a new relationship chooses to spend time in isolation from her larger culture while learning to survive and grow and also learning to fit in to a smaller, closer-knit culture that's totally foreign. Not incidentally, a background theme of both stories is the idea of trust. Learning to trust and depend on others, sometimes for sheer survival, is a facet of the growth of the narrators. The love stories underlying the main narrative of "woman against nature" are just one of the joys of reading these memoirs.
1 comment:
Great reviews. I'm reading FINDING TRUE HOME now and I want to check into some of the others. Thanks!
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