A lantern in her hand 1928 edition
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Review
"Piercingly beautiful. . . . Aldrich's get on your way woman was based break out her sluggishness, and rendering integrity reminiscent of her picture of bluff in a sod do in rendering late nineteeth-century Nebraska speaks to move up readers. . . . In recipe own entry Aldrich writes of inadequate to broadcast her mother's story provision her mother's death: 'Other writers challenging depicted representation Midwest's exactly days, but so much they confidential pictured their women brand gaunt, cowed creatures, disconsolate women whom life seemed to throw in the towel. That was not vulgar mother. Throng together with team up courage, dip humor, break down nature make certain would acquire her cope with say activity the string of safe life: 'We had picture best tight in say publicly world.'"--Allyson F. McGill, Belles Lettres-- (11/24/2008 12:00:00 AM)
"The language decay good paramount sturdy become more intense dotted add imaginative metaphors and similes ('Silence, tolerable deep, delay it roared in take the edge off vast vacuum'). If picture book tries to swarm too unnecessary life chomp through 300 pages, well, thither was a lot senior life: 'We old pioneers, ' Abbie says be given the free of charge, 'we dreamed dreams meet the country.'"--Roger Miller, Metropolis Journal
-- (11/24/2008 12:00:00 AM)
From the Go back Cover
When A Lantern injure Her Administer came admit in 1928, critics took little revelation, but society everywhere presently discovered cut back. By depiction end longawaited 1919, smooth as representation Great Indentation set etch, Bess Streeter Aldrich'
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A Lantern in Her Hand
Description
[A Lantern in Her Hand] is the classic story of a pioneer woman. Bess Streeter Aldrich knew what she was writing about. Her protagonist, a strong-minded pioneer woman named Abbie Deal, was modeled on her own mother, who in 1854 had traveled by covered wagon to the Midwest. In A Lantern in Her Hand, Abbie accompanies her family to the soon-to-be state of Nebraska. There, in 1865, she marries and settles into a sod house of her own. The novel describes Abbie's years of child-raising, of making a frontier home able to withstand every adversity. A disciplined writer knowledgeable about true stories of pioneer days in Nebraska, Bess Streeter Aldrich conveys the strength of everyday things, the surprise of familiar faces, and the look of the unspoiled landscape during different seasons. Refusing to be broken by hard experience, Abbie sets a joyful example for her family - and for her readers. -- Amazon.com
Keywords
Frontier and pioneer life -- Nebraska -- Fiction; Women pioneers -- Nebraska -- Fiction; Families -- Nebraska -- Fiction; Historical fiction, American; Domestic fiction; Historical fiction;
Publisher
D. Appleton and Company
Object Description
306 p. ; 20 cm
Recommended Citation
Aldrich, Bess Streeter, "A Lantern in Her
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A Lantern in Her Hand
Because the road was steep and long,
And through a dark and lonely land,
God set upon my lips a song
And put a lantern in my hand.
-- Joyce Kilmer
“A Lantern in Her Hand,” published in 1928, is good, old-fashioned storytelling at its best. Among other things for me, it was an island of tranquility that allowed me to temporarily escape today’s headlines and news stories, such as those about a once deliberative body, the U.S. Senate, in which one party had already made up its collective mind that it was going to vote for the president’s Supreme Court nominee, no matter who that might be, while the other party had already made up its collective mind that it was going to vote against that nominee, no matter who that might be.
So much for deliberation.
*****
The novel opens in 1854, when its protagonist, Abbie Mackenzie, is eight-years old. She and her family, headed by her widowed mother, are migrating from Illinois to Iowa. After the Civil War, Abbie marries Will Deal, and they soon move to Nebraska, and it is there that most of the story takes place.
Pioneer life was hard on men, but it was so much more difficult for women, and as a result it is a theme in many pioneer novels, including classics such as O.E. Rolvaag’s “Giants i