Walking West - Hardcover

Sickels, Noelle

3.72

18 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312132085 ISBN 13: 9780312132088

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1995

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In the wet spring of 1852, a small band of Indiana farm families set off for California, lured west by the promise of a better life. The Muller party crosses treacherous rivers, slogs through mud and thunderstorms, and hauls wagons up and down mountains and over baking deserts in a seven-month journey across our raw continent.
Among them is Alice Muller, a reluctant traveler forced to leave home by her husband Henry's dreams of prosperity. But the Mullers greatly underestimate the hardships they will face, and it is ultimately Alice who must draw on the deepest reserves of body and soul to lead the little group of bone-weary emigrants through their final miles. In doing so, Alice changes from a dutiful farm wife into a woman capable of deep commitment, strong actions, and profound self-knowledge.

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From the Publisher:

Noelle Sickels' first novel takes readers across America-through Fort Laramie, Chimney Rock, the Black Hills, the Rockies, and the Sierras-and into the minds of her extraordinary characters. Walking West combines history and storytelling in a novel of astonishing authenticity and emotional power.

Review:

It is a story of a family like so many of the thousands who moved west, settling new lands at the cost of half their members. Written around Alice Muller, it is a gentle and compassionate tale that is very well written. Interspersed with diary entries, it is a story of great courage in the face of daunting adversity, written with almost lyrical precision. -- Rima L. Firrone, Ocala Star-Banner, July 16, 1995

Noelle Sickels offers a woman's perspective on a historical period more often portrayed through the male icons of cowboys, outlaws and goldseekers. -- Susan Saxton D'Aoust, The River Journal, October 30, 1995

Sickels has garbed her first novel in such authenticity that she may as well have been there herself. Further, she has told the tale from a woman's point of view-easy on the derring-do, emphasis on the way the parlous journey affects the psyches of the pilgrims. In contrast with today's wearying razzle-dazzle, Sickels' approach is homespun, with patches of poetry. -- Dick Roraback, Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1995

The westward expansion of the American frontier in the mid-1800's is expertly chronicled in Sickels's heartrending first novel. -- Publisher's Weekly, June 6, 1995

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