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The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton is a Little House on the Prairie for grownups. Lidie's accounts of homesteading, from buying a new stove to coming upon the finest horse in the territory (and among the finest in literature), combine character, charm, and social history. (Smiley's chapter titles alone--which include "I Eavesdrop, and Hear Ill of Myself" and "Papa Is Cordial"--are worth the price of admission. "Papa," by the way, is an aged anti-abolitionist who wants to marry her.) But there is also menace. Early on, for example, Lidie pastes her home with "leaves of The Liberator and some other papers that Thomas had brought with him from the United States. This, he said, would serve the threefold purpose of advertising our views to our visitors, reminding ourselves of the arguments to be made in the cause, and keeping out the wind. Every leaf, according to the new laws of Kansas Territory, was treasonable."
Though Lidie once conjured up paradisiacal images of a "(weathertight and cozy) cabin," surrounded by fruit-laden trees, pure streams, and verdant grass through which she'd dally, "perhaps in pursuit of a pretty little cow," their tiny home is freezing and their situation fraught with fear. The Newtons' first months are filled with the exhilaration of new marriage and the difficulties of life in a hostile environment. Winter kills off several of their fellow radicals and "the southerners" seem bent on violently removing the rest. Lidie unfortunately makes the mistake of finding the season more formidable: "The prolonged frigid weather made even the prospect of being hanged, shot, dismembered, killed or otherwise cleared out rather an abstract one. The possibility of being frozen to death was distinctly more likely."
In her acknowledgments, Smiley thanks David Dary, the fine historian of the West, and The All-True Travels is a superb reinvention. Who would have thought that a shipboard meal would be more like a pitched battle, or that--as Lidie soon discovers--sentiment would turn out to be "a cruel joke in K.T."? At a certain point in the novel, however, the historical and social fabric becomes almost overwhelmingly dense. But after her hero and heroine are ambushed by southerners, Smiley pares down the details and explores Lidie's character and conscience (as she is forced into a series of memorable guises), and her "all-true travels" take on emotional and ethical complexity.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition. Signed beautifully by author on title page in black fountain ink. Set in the 1850s, THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the questions of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom. And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual, wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and powerful evocation of an almost forgotten part of the American past, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling, enriching best. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A THOUSAND ACRES and MOO. New, unread, first edition, first , in fine, mylar-protected dust jacket. {Not remainder-marked or price-clipped} DD/L19/L98. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 3808