Top 10 Pioneer Books

Pioneers – those hardy souls who left behind family and all that was known to them to explore unknown reaches and try for a chance at a better life.  I have been intrigued by pioneers and explorers since I was a child.  The following are my top pioneer picks in no particular order.

1. The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck – Two modern day brothers decide to travel the Oregon Trail with an old fashioned schooner and team. This was a hilarious road trip tales as well as including a great history on the original pioneers who took the Oregon Trail.  I loved it!
2. Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon – The first three books of the Outlander series are about Scotland and its history; book four changes to the frontier life as the Frasiers’ settle in the United States in the 18^th century.  Jamie and Claire arrive in the United States via shipwreck.  Jamie eventually decides to start a settlement, Frasier’s Ridge in North Carolina.  Building a cabin, settlement, and the hardships of making it all work are all described in vivid detail.  I especially love how Claire uses her 20^th century doctor knowledge to become a skilled 18^th century healer.  Overall, this is the story of Jamie and Claire carving out a life on the frontier.
3. Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati – Into the Wilderness is a continuation of Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper.  It is the story of Nathaniel Bonner (Hawkeye and Cora’s son) and Elizabeth Middleton, a 29-year old English spinster who has moved to a remove New York mountain village to join her family in 1792.  Will her refined English ways be able to handle the trials of living on the frontier?
4.  Little House on the Prairie Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder – Lyrical series that explores the
   
   many moves and lives of the Ingalls family from Wisconsin to Kansas to Minnesota to South Dakota.  The Little House Series is descriptive and wonderfully told from a child’s point of view.  It describes the lives of pioneers in great detail thinking that kids won’t know what is meant otherwise.  This is perfect for us that are so far removed from the time to teach us how pioneers lived and did their tasks.  The love of the Ingalls family helps them through trials and tribulations.  They lived during changing times and Wilder was able to immortalize family, friends, and a way of life.
5. Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder – Pioneer Girl was Laura’s original book written for adults that eventually was turned into the Little House series for children (and her daughter Rose’s books for adults).  This publication has pictures, maps, and notes that meticulously detail the real journey of the Ingalls and answered many burning questions I’ve had since childhood.  This is a grittier tale than the Little House series.
   
6. Free Land by Rose Wilder Lane – As I discovered in Pioneer Girl, Rose Wilder Lane helped her mother by editing her original adult novel, Pioneer Girl, and then helped her edit them to children’s books.  Lane then used the stories to write her own adult novels.  Rose Wilder Lane was a very famous author in her day, but has been eclipsed in modern times by her mother.  Lane’s pioneer books are worth a read, especially for lovers of pioneer tales.  Mary and David Beaton are newlyweds that travel to the Dakota Territory to homestead 300 acres.  Isolation, blizzards, and cyclones are just some of the trials they face.  Their story is very similar to the real life stories of Almanzo and Laura Wilder and Charles and Caroline Ingalls.
7. Young Pioneers by Rose Wilder Lane – This novel was originally published as Let the Hurricane Roar.  It tells the story of David and Molly.  They are newly married and just 18 and 16 when they head west with the blessing of their families.  They have a rough time in the newly settled west when a grasshopper plague hits.  You can think of this book as an adult version of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Bank of Plum Creek.
8. My Antonia by Willa Cather – Willa Cather perfecting captured the pioneering spirit in two of her most famous works, My Antonia and O Pioneers.  In My Antonia, Jim Burden is raised by his pioneering grandparents in Nebraska.  His nearest neighbors are the Bohemian Shimerda family and their daughter, Antonia.  Antonia and Jim have many adventures together and experience the trials and joys of the pioneer life.
   
9.  O Pioneers by Willa Cather - O Pioneers is the story of Alexandra Bergson.  She is strong woman who takes over the family farm after her father’s death and makes it a success in Nebraska during pioneer times.
10. A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich – A Lantern in Her Hand is the story of a mother, Abbie McKenzie Deal.  As a young woman, Abbie dreams of a singing career, but instead marries a neighbor boy and Civil War vet, Will Deal.  Newly married Will and Abbie Deal move to Nebraska to start a family.  It’s a hard life starting a new farm and family while living in a soddie.  Abbie lives live sacrificing all for the sake of her children.  All of Abbie’s life is packed in this one novel, but I love her reflections as an old lady on her life and decisions.

What is your favorite pioneer book?  What elements of a pioneer’s tale draws you to the story?

For a travelogue of my visit to two pioneering sites – the settings for Little House in the Big Woods and On the Banks of Plum Creek, check out this post.

A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich

A Lantern in Her Hand is one of my mother’s favorite books.  She recommended it to me when I was in middle school.  I read it and loved it.  I’ve read it a few times since then, but not since becoming a mother myself.  As it is a great book about the sacrifices that a mother made during pioneer days, I thought it was a good June pick for the FLICKS Book and Movie club, which is made up entirely of mothers.

The book starts off with an introduction about an old pioneer woman in Nebraska, Abbie Deal. The introduction ends with “This is the story of the old lady who died while the meat burned and the children played ‘Run, Sheep, Run’ across her yard.”  To me, this was an explosive beginning to the novel. Abbie Mackenzie is the daughter of a Scottish aristocrat and an Irish peasant.  With their fortune lost, her parents move to America.  Her father unfortunately dies young, but her mother moves her large family out west to Iowa.  As a child, Abbie dreams of returning to the life that her Grandmother Mackenzie had as a wealthy woman.  She meets Will Deal, a sensitive neighbor boy.  She grows into a beautiful young woman with an exquisite singing voice and great ambitions.  Ed Matthews, Doc Matthew’s son who is getting educated out East, wants to marry Abbie and take her East for training, but she can’t forget about Will Deal who is fighting in the Civil War in Ed’s place.  As Abbie marries, has children, and faces difficulties in life, she consistently sacrifices her dreams in order to fulfill the dreams of her children.

This brought about an interesting discussion at book club.  Should one sacrifice all for one’s children?  Is it selfish to keep some ambition for oneself?   While Abbie and her sacrifices were heartwarming as was her total dedication to her children, at times it was heartbreaking in the book when she wasn’t able to fulfill any of her dreams.  Two other book club members read the book, but sadly, they did not love it as much as me.  I think the old fashioned language (written in the 1920’s) and skips through time turned them off.  They felt it was very rushed trying to tell Abbie’s entire life story in one book.  Reading it again myself, I still loved it.  It was a bit rushed, but I liked how it went through Abbie’s entire life and seemed to take more time at the end for life reflection.  Abbie was proud of how she was able to help her children to succeed in life and felt her sacrifices were well founded.  I thought it was an admirable quality!

I was also struck in the book by just how alone you were as a pioneer woman.  At one point Abbie is helping her husband dig a well.  She hits herself on the head with the well handle while bringing her husband out of the well and knocks herself out.  She awakens to her crying one year old and leaves him to cross the prairie and look for help as she can’t get her husband out of the well.  Yes, she left her one year old next to an open hole in the ground to seek help as there was no other alternative.  She also has to travel with morning sickness in a covered wagon out west . . . with my hypomesis gravidum, which would have been the end to me!  I loved the detail of the trials of being a pioneer woman.  It gave me respect again for our ancestors and their struggles to find a good life for themselves.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

“If you want a garden – You’ve got to dream a garden.”

“You are so much a part of me, that if you were taken away, I think it would seem that you just went on with me.  And I’m sure if I were the one taken I would go on with you, remembering all you had been to me.”

“It was the only old home the children had ever known.  There ought to be a home for children to come to, - and their children, - a central place, to which they could always bring their joys and sorrows – an old familiar place for  them to return to on Sundays and Christmases.  An old home ought always to stand like a mother with open arms.  It ought to be here waiting for the children to come to it, - like homing pigeons.”

“Grace was loath to accept the decision.  ‘As I said, I’m sorry.  You owe it to yourself, if you possibly can go.  Your life has been so narrow, Mother . . . just here, all the time.  You ought to get out now and see things.’

Unwittingly, as so often she did, Grace had hurt her Mother’s feelings.  For a moment Abbie nursed her little hurt, and then she said quietly, ‘You know Grace, its queer, but I don’t feel narrow.  I feel broad.  How can I explain it to you, so you would understand?  I’ve seen everything . . . and I’ve hardly been away from this yard.  I’ve seen the sun set behind the Alps over there when the clouds have been piled up on the edge of the prairie.  I’ve seen the ocean billows in the rise and fall of the prairie grass.  I’ve seen history in the making . . . three ugly wars flare up and die down.  I’ve sent a lover and two brothers to one, a son and son-in-law to another and two grandsons to the other.  I’ve seen the feeble beginnings of a raw state and the civilization that developed there, and I’ve been part of the beginning and part of the growth.  I’ve married . . . and borne children and looked into the face of death.  Is childbirth narrow, Grace?  Or marriage?  Or death?  When you’ve experienced all of those things, Grace, the spirit has traveled although the body has been confined.  I think travel is a rare privilege and I’m glad you can have it.  But not every one who stays at home is narrow and not every one who travels is broad.  I think if you understand humanity . . . can sympathize with every creature . . . can put yourself into the personality of every one . . . you’re not narrow . . . you’re broad.’”

Overall, A Lantern in her Hand is a classic pioneer tale that also is a wonderful tale of a mother.  I loved reading it again.

Book Source:  An original copy from 1928 that I picked up at an antique store earlier in my life.