Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier
by Linda Peavy, Ursula Smith
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Book Summary Information
Author: Linda Peavy, Ursula SmithEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-03-01
ISBN: 0806130547
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd)
Book Reviews of Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier
Book Review: Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier
Summary: 5 Stars
This book gets it right. Occasionally a reader finds a book that rates a score of five on a scale of one to five, yet the reader knows that the authors could have added even more of value by increasing the number of pages by half. This is that type of book. The challenge would have been to make it as readable and as available to the general reader. These authors have chosen instead to write additional books.
Readers will find "Pioneer Women" extraordinarily readable. In addition, it is the most accurate and realistic among the several books I have read on this and related topics. Not surprisingly, the majority of those books are listed in the bibliography. This is indeed a book that improves greatly upon its sources.
The authors point out that in places, the frontier in America extended well into the twentieth century. My wife and I were raised on ranches where home was a log cabin without water or electricity. Meals were cooked on a coal and wood stove; kerosene lamps provided light at night. My mother was born in 1894, married in 1914, and kept a diary from 1918 into the seventies. This book is exceptionally true to that diary, to my own experience, and to the gossip I heard listening to my parents and their contemporaries.
History should be reported without an agenda. Inevitably a little distortion creeps in, but Peavy and Smith manage to keep it to a bare minimum. They cover hardships of pioneer life, the experiences of minorities, female influences on civilization and culture, and feminist issues without letting any of those become a focus of the book. They use first-person accounts from pioneer diaries and letters effectively without this being a reprinting of those accounts. Further, the authors obviously have an in-depth understanding of their subject and are able to project that into their text.
This is not an academic study and readers with an interest in that area should refer to the bibliography which lists several such studies. This book uses an interesting approach to eliminating footnotes. They explain it in the fine print at the beginning of the bibliography. I suggest that readers read that explanation before starting the first chapter; if the authors revise the book sometime, perhaps they will consider adding a note in the introduction that directs us there.
There are very few aspects of the pioneer experience that the authors have missed. The chapter titled "Behind Closed Doors" on family dynamics ably addresses issues seldom covered in other general texts. Throughout the book I found that whenever I thought of a new topic that should be covered, it soon appeared. If you are a history buff interested in a general coverage of the lives of women on the frontier, this is the book for you. If you are looking for in-depth coverage of particular aspects of pioneer life, start with this book and it will help you keep your topic in the proper perspective.
Summary of Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier
Pioneer Women provides a rare look at frontier life through the eyes of the pioneer women who settled the American West. Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith vividly describe the hardships such women endured journeying west and making homes and communities on the frontier. Their hopes and fears and, most of all, their courage in the face of adversity are revealed in excerpts from journals, letters, and oral histories. Illustrated with a fascinating collection of seldom-seen photographs, Pioneer Women reveals the faces as well as the voices of women who lived on the frontier.The authors portray a wide variety of women, from those who found liberty and confidence in undertaking 'men's work' to those who felt burdened by the wind, the weather, and the struggle of frontier life.
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