Prairie Widow (An Evans Novel of the West) - Softcover

Bakst, Harold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590773322 ISBN 13: 9781590773321

Publisher: M. Evans & Company, 2014

Synopsis

Jennifer Vandermeer hated Kansas. With all her heart, she wished that she’d never left the dull security of Ohio, had never let her husband, Walter, take her from the order and civilization of the East.

There was no preacher in Four Corners, Kansas, so Seth Baker, at the behest of his wife, improvised the words. Jennifer, her two young children, and a small group of strangers, listened as they clustered in a spot freshly scythed around the rectangular pit.

Walter had not been long among us before he was taken away, but, uh, he was a good, uh, farmer and a good, uh, man...

It just didn’t make sense. Jennifer had told Walter over and over: “It’s ludicrous, neither of us know the first thing about farming.” But Walter had been adamant, and they came to Kansas.

Now Walter was dead. And Jennifer was marooned in a sea of grass with a farm to take care of and two small children to raise. Where would she go? What would she do?

It would be harder than she ever imagined. As she stood over her husband’s fresh grave she couldn’t know that her life would become a war every day. War against the elements, war against the will of the land, and most of all, a war, every minute of every day, against herself and her fears...

For every glorious legend of the Old West there are a thousand workaday stories of the boundless persistence and courage that turned a wilderness into civilization. Jennifer Vandermeer and the story of her hardship, disasters and triumphs, is one of the real stories of how the West was won.

About this title

About the Author:

Harold Bakst was a master teacher who taught at Bucknell University, Iona College, and Pace University among others. He wrote three other novels including The Strange Voyage of Kian the Mariner. He lived in Pennsylvania.

From Publishers Weekly:

A western devoid of violence and other typical trappings of the genre, this first novel seems clearly aimed at women readers--yet, equally devoid of any female sensibility, it has very limited appeal. In the 1870s, Jennifer Vandermeer, her husband, Walter, and their two children arrive in Four Corners, Kans., after an arduous journey from Ohio in a covered wagon. The pitiless climate, the shabby town with its false-fronted buildings and the endless sea of prairie grass fill Jennifer with horror; she snubs her new neighbors and longs for her old home. Meanwhile Walter insists on planting unsuitable crops and then works himself unceasingly until he is stricken with a fever and dies. Asked to teach school, Jennifer equivocates and lays plans to return east--plans interrupted by would-be suitors, prairie fires, unscrupulous land agents and a plague of grasshoppers. A static heroine, Jennifer does little more than whine between disasters, and her final thoughts of remaining on the prairie seem more the product of a broken will than of a change of heart. Although based on pioneer diaries, this slim volume misfires through its lack of authentic psychological drama.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: M. Evans & Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1590773322
• ISBN 13: 9781590773321
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 150