I’ve always loved letters collection, books of letters, and epistolary novels. This is a memoir constructed from a series of letters, and I am not sure of the specific history regarding the publication, but it’s an interesting a fascinating record of the country some 100 years ago. The letters tell us early on about how our narrator Elinore Pruitt has recently arrived in Montana, is now a landowner, and is writing to her former employer and longtime friend about her time.
It becomes clear very soon on that Elinore Pruitt is a well-read and intelligent woman. She refers specifically to reading a lot of books, including a “Leatherstocking Tales” collection, and makes a very funny Becky Sharp allusion in describing her impromptu marriage. In addition to all this, she spends long letters describing her place as a Southern woman in the new West, and of course this involves some uncomfortably casual usage of the “N word” a few times, but also involves a close examination of Mormonism from an close proximity, which in the late 1800s and early 1900s is very interesting.
It’s a limited book, but for a book published in 1914 it carries a lot of weight and presents a clear knowledge and verisimilitude regarding the subject matter. It’s also funnily positioned in my life because I was listening to the audiobook of this one while playing the game Red Dead Redemption 2, which takes place at almost the exact years as this in a more approximate version of the new West.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Woman-Homesteader-Dover-Americana/dp/0486451429/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549502293&sr=8-2&keywords=letters+of+a+woman+homesteader)