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.

Alexander’s Bridge by Willa Cather

The world needs more books about sexy civil engineers that are world famous bridge designers.  Bartley Alexander is working on several important projects, including a bridge in Canada which will be the largest cantilever bridge in the world.  He loves his supportive, beautiful, and well connected wife, Winifred, but a chance meeting with a long ago love, actress Hilda Burgoyne, in London puts Alexander on a path to disaster.  Torn between two women he loves, Alexander must make a decision about his future.  

Alexander’s Bridge was Willa Cather’s first novel published in 1912.  In an interesting preface that was added for the 1922 reprint, Cather states that the novel was a practice novel that “does not deal with the kind of subject-matter in which I now find myself most at home.”  She stated that she picked the subject as she found it interesting and that “the writer, at the beginning of his career, is often more interested in his discoveries about his art than the homely truths that have been with him from his cradle.”  This novel was good, but definitely not as polished as other Cather works.  It’s amazing to me that O, Pioneers, one of my favorite novels, was published only a year later.  I thought in this novel, Cather was trying to mimic Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence at certain moments, but without the experience in Wharton’s world, it falls short.  Part of the problem is just the brevity of this novel, it doesn’t have much room to expand on the characters.

One item I found interesting was that the back description on this book stated that Alexander’s wife Winifred was “cold” and that is what drove him to Hilda.  I didn’t find that at all.  Alexander seemed to really love Winifred and had in fact left Hilda for Winifred in the first place.  With Hilda, Alexander seems to want to recapture his lost youth, but his deep regard seems to be for Winifred.  This is what causes his extreme angst.  I’ll put a spoiler alert now as I want to talk about the ending.

SPOILER ALERT

The disaster at the end of the novel seemed familiar to me so I looked it up. Willa Cather based it on the Quebec Bridge Disaster in Canada where 88 people were killed in not one, but two bridge failures.  The first failure was caused when famous bridge engineer, Theodore Cooper, decided to lengthen the bridge span without revising his calculations.  He also did not inspect the construction personally, but had a young engineer without experience do this.  The young engineer sent to Cooper telling him that things were not looking right, and Cooper wrote back to stop work.  Unfortunately they did not and it had tragic consequences.

In Alexander’s Bridge, Cather mimicked real world events with Alexander in New York with Hilda during this critical time.  The on-site inspector cannot find Alexander and gets a hold of him a day later to tell of the problems.  The inspector couldn’t get a hold of him as he was with Hilda illicitly.  This one day delay makes it so that when Alexander arrives on site, he is too late and while inspecting the bridge, the tragedy occurs.  Alexander’s love for both women, his indecision, made it so that he was crushed both literally and figuratively, but luckily for him, his letter to Winifred telling her of the affair has the ink washed off so she never knows.  

I wear a stainless steel ring on my right pinky as part of the Order of the Engineer.  It is on my working hand to remind me to always be ethical in my work as an engineer and to put mankind before profit.  I always heard the legend that this came from Canada and that the original rings were made from a bridge that collapsed there.  Reading this novel and finding out about the Quebec Bridge Disaster, I put two and two together.  Canadians go through the Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer which was originally written by Rudyard Kipling (who knew!) and was eventually brought to the United States as the Order of the Engineer.  The Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer was develop in the 1920’s in direct response to the Quebec Bridge Disaster.

SPOILER END

 

My favorite quote from the book from Alexander, “After all, life doesn’t offer a man much.  You work like the devil and think you’re getting on, and suddenly discover that you’ve only been getting yourself tied up.  A million details drink you dry.”  Spoken like an overworked engineer.

Alexander’s Bridge was not Cather’s best work, but it was an interesting look into her development as an author and also fascinating to me as an engineer.  If you are a fan of either Cather or civil engineering, I highly recommend this book.  If you are just starting to read Cather, I recommend My Antonia or Death Comes for the Archbishop which are her best works.

Book Source:  Christmas gift from my best friend Jenn.

Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush

While I may not have ever voted for Laura Bush’s husband, I was very interested to read her autobiography. Unlike other political memoirs I have tried to read (Hello Clintons!), Bush’s autography covered enough material to be interesting, but did not delve into boring and self-seeking detail. Of course, of even more interest to me was Laura Bush’s love of reading.

Laura Bush as first lady is every book lovers dream. Bush was able to hold literary symposiums about her favorite authors and meet many current favorite authors. She mentioned one of my favorite novels, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather more than once. Indeed, Bush’s love of books is apparent throughout the book and her favorite authors seem to match up with mine. I really loved that one of her favorite things that she did as first lady was to visit Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Missouri.

Laura Bush writes the story of her life starting from the very beginning and through the move back to Texas after the end of George Bush’s presidency. I found her entire story intriguing, and was a great modern history. The book seemed to show me what I had always thought; Laura Bush is the kind of person I would like to sit down with for dinner and chat with. She is a normal person who just happened to be first lady (although her talk about the ranch being small at 4,000 sq. ft. did give me a chuckle).

I must say the book did give me a new way of thinking about some of George Bush’s policies, although some of Laura Bush’s defense of certain items was weak at best. For example, the defense against the invasion of Iraq was maybe we should have bombed Afghanistan in 2000 so 9/11 wouldn’t have happened . . . that is not the way the world works.

Overall the strength in the book was the interesting American life that Laura Bush has led and her great love of books. I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it to all of my friends, be they Republican, Democrat, or other.

Book Source: The Kewaunee Public Library

Laura’s Favorite Classics (Part 1 from Austen to Dreiser)

What defines a classic? Is it something that a stodgy college English professor tells you to read? Is it something that you read and enjoy? Is it a book that taught you a lesson? Is it science fiction, a graphic novel, a children’s novel? Is it a book that is often read and cited by other people and pop culture in general? I think a classic novel is all of these things. I loved my high school and college literature classics, but used them as a spring board for where to start in my search for great novels to read. Going through the lists of “classic” novels has made me think about my own personal library and favorite classics. I’ve also had several friends tell me that they are going to read “the classics.” This is part one of my favorite classic novels.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Angelou writes a tale that is funny at times and heartbreaking at others. Overall it’s unforgettable.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Little Women was one of my favorite books as a young girl. I just reread it a couple of years ago and loved it again. While there are “moral lesson” parts that drag a bit, the overall love for family in the novel, and engaging stories of home life make this novel a classic.

Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion by Jane Austen. All six of Austen’s novels are excellent and must reads. I’d start with Pride and Prejudice. I love the humor and the social commentary. Persuasion is my other favorite. It is a tale of true love and how far we will let our friends “persuade” us against our better judgment.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. The Bronte sisters and their passionate tales are must reads. Anne often gets short shrift, but I feel her novels are as good as her sisters. While all are passionate tales, they can also be taken as stories that bring to light the position of women in Victorian society. Each of these novels is my favorite by each sister (I’ve read all of their collected works).

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Buck was a very popular author in the early part of the twentieth century. Reading her novels of life in China and the eternal questions of love and life as a woman, it is easy to see why.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. This riveting tale of murder in rural Kansas is a classic. This book was the start of literary true crime narratives.

Death Comes for the Archbishop, O Pioneers, and My Antonia by Willa Cather. Cather is one of my favorite novelists. Skip her Pulitzer Prize winning novel (One of Ours) and opt instead for three of her masterpieces. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a wonderful story set in the Southwest that is full of descriptive narrative and wonderful characters. O Pioneers and My Antonia are unforgettable tales of the hardships of life as a pioneer in Nebraska.

David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I would like to read all of Charles Dickens novels before I die. These three are my favorites of what I’ve read so far. I love Dickens detailed descriptions and quirky characters. David Copperfield is his most autobiographical tale, A Tale of Two Cities is a tear-jerker that is one of his most quotable books, and A Christmas Carol is beloved and known by all.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy while I was in college (on my own – although I would have loved to discuss it in a class). It had a slow start, but once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down. It was only a few years after the OJ trial when I read it and I found that not much had changed in the 70 years since the book was written. Not only is it a love story gone wrong, but it’s also the story of a boy trying to get ahead in the world, of a system that doesn’t care for the individual, and public officials who only care about getting ahead and not about the people they serve. This book changed the way I feel about capital punishment. It is not a quick read, but by the end I cared enough that I cried.

I hope to continue posting on this subject in the future. This is my look through my first book case… I’ll do bookcase number two next!

As I look back through this list, I am struck by the fact that I didn't read any of these books for a high school or college literature class. The only one I did read in college, Pride and Prejudice, I had read on my own before and after the class. I think a lot of it was that for some reason in high school and college, not too many women authors made it onto the "great novels" list that we read. In fact, P&P was in my British novel class and the only book we read by a woman. My American novel class had not one book by a woman. What do you think about that? Why do teachers and professors (or at least mine) usually pick men authors?

I would love to keep discussing this in the comments section. How do you feel about these classics overall? What are your favorite classics?