Young widow with her four-year-old daughter decided she was tired of washing other people’s laundry for a living, and moved to Wyoming to claim a homstead and asisst on a neighbor’s ranch. She found she loved the hard work, and before long married the neighbor (their homestead plots shared a boundary). The book is a compilation of letters she wrote back home to a previous employer (who must have be a close friend). She tells about the weather, the landscape, the neighbors and acquaintances- none of them lived nearby so visits were always welcome and travelers always given whatever they could share. There is really not much detail about the day-to-day work of the homestead (though she mentions planting potatoes, keeping a large vegetable garden and tending flowers, canning goods, sewing clothes, etc) it is mostly about the people around her, interesting little stories and incidents of character. Some surprising, some quite touching. Lots of examples of making do- improptu weddings, helping at a birth, performing funeral services when nobody else was around to do so. Generosity, humor and plain old gumption are strong in these pages. She certainly was an admirable woman and had a lot of interesting stories to tell. I found out there’s a sequel- shorter, but still sounds good so I’ll keep my eye out for it.
One part that really amused me was about an overnight journey she took with some friends, to a “Leatherstocking dinner”. This reader was just as puzzled as the letter writer as to what a ” ‘stocking dinner” could be. I was surprised when she described with delight the spread on long tables- all the foods mentioned in the Leatherstocking Tales (ie venison cooked six different ways, beaver tail, grouse, and so on). My first thought was: wow, people back then must have really admired these books! it’s like nowadays when folks have a dinner featuring dishes from Jane Austen novels. My second thought was wonder, that the James Fenimore Cooper books had been so popular. I tried one of the more famous and found it very unreadable. So that got me to thinking why. Did people have bigger imaginations back then, with no smart phones or internet or television. Was it easier for them to focus on and picture the wordy flowery descriptions, sitting around in a small room after dark with someone reading aloud (so I imagine)? I also wonder what one of those Cooper fans from the 1800’s would think of today’s popular novels. They might consider that we’ve become less intelligent as a whole (just going by the extensively detailed wordiness those older popular novels had).
There was another bookish part that made me smile. Her daughter received a copy of Black Beauty from the friend, and loved it so much. And later described an incident just like one in the novel- where a man’s team of horses couldn’t pull a load up a steep slope but he got angry and refused offered help. This little girl went on and on about how she wished people would understand about the horses being worked too hard.
A bit more info here.
