The Journal Of Callie Wade - Hardcover

Miller, Dawn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671521004 ISBN 13: 9780671521004

Publisher: Atria, 1996

Synopsis

Dawn Miller's marvelous debut novel is a grand adventure - and a glorious love story - experienced with all the passion and yearning of a character you'll never forget: eighteen-year-old Callie Wade, whose hopeful heart is as rich with promise as the beckoning frontier...
Independence, Missouri, May 3, 1859: "Home is where your heart leads you..." Mama had better be right, because we are traveling with a bunch of quite peculiar strangers. My dear little sister Rose may have lungs as frail as cobwebs, but I pray she'll live to see the California sun. Pa and my wild-hearted brother, Jack, are raring to go, but it's the women who have the salt to beat all! Walking miles in the dust, birthing babies on the trail...they'd put a general to shame. But I'm scared, and acting snappish - enough to put off Quinn McGregor, you might suppose. He's got a blacksmith's strength and the soul of a poet, and his grave blue Irish eyes seem to keep finding mine...
"When things get rough, remember: It's the rubbin' that brings out the shine," said Mama, and I'm sure shining, through Kansas dust and Colorado rain and the parching Utah sun. Maybe it's true that life ain't in holding a good hand, but playing a poor one well! But oh, how I cherish the dances under the stars, the coffee brewed over sage fires, the beautiful pair of beaded moccasins left me as a secret gift...and the great love growing in my heart for Quinn...
The Journal of Callie Wade invites us into a world long vanished, brought to life once more in the once-in-a-lifetime experiences of a young pioneer woman. Here is her story...rich in love and sorrow, grit and grandeur...inspiring and unforgettable.

About this title

Reviews

Miller adds a feminine touch to the frontier in the voice of 18-year-old Callie Wade, who describes a wagon-train journey from Missouri to California in 1859. In a diary given to her by her late mother and in letters to a friend back home, Callie records daily routines, dangerous encounters and illnesses and tragedies. In addition to her family?her father, her brother, Jack, and her sickly sister, Rose?the entourage includes Zach Koch, a preacher's devilish son; blacksmith Quinn McGregor, Callie's eventual soul mate; and Grace Hollister, courageous widow and mother of four. Soon, Callie is torn between her budding love for Quinn and her responsibility for tending Rose. The journey is perilous, and sometimes even the resilient Callie has trouble maintaining her faith. But the wheels of the wagon train grind relentlessly on, stopping for nothing?not childbirth, nor cholera, not even heroic death. Homespun epigraphs from Callie's late mother intrude on the story, and Zach's sudden change of heart after he attempts to rape Callie is not entirely credible. While pleasant, Callie's simple, homespun voice is rather flat, and the narrative carries none of the lyric beauty of another recent epistolary novel of a wagon train journey, Karen Osborne's Between Earth and Sky.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An old-fashioned debut novel told in a series of journal entries and letters written in the unpretentious, homespun language one would expect of an 18-year-old Missouri farm girl recording her experiences on a wagon train in 1859. The Wade family--Callie, her widowed father, and her brother Jack--migrate west in search of a healthier climate for Rose, a consumptive younger sister. Grieving the loss of her home and fearing that her memories will not be enough to preserve her past, Callie is puzzled that Jack and Pa seem so unaffected. She remarks in her journal that to men ``a home was no more than where they ate or slept.'' The different reactions of men and women to the westering experience is an ongoing theme here, with Miller continuing to contrast Callie's behavior and emotions with those of Jack and of Quinn McGregor, a young Irish emigrant with a romantic interest in Callie. Quinn has lost his whole family but sees the journey as his turn to carry on their dreams, while the accidental death of Callie's father and the endless graves along the trail only add to the young woman's depression and fear. The resilient and pattern-breaking Grace Hollister, a widow with four children, provides a further contrast. Like Jack and Quinn, Grace sees the West as hope, telling Callie she should ``never look back.'' On the other hand, Mrs. Handy, yet another emigrant, hides in her wagon and professes to be glad her infant died shortly after its birth. She has lost all hope. Despite an occasional lapse into a too- folksy vernacular, Miller's narrative offers a realistic sense of time and place that renders the happy ending less cloying and more believable than it might otherwise have been. A westward-migration historical that's about--well, family values. Could find its niche, perhaps, most naturally as a YA. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This first novel, comprising a collection of fictional letters, is based on many true events that occured during the opening of the West. Hardships of leaving behind familiar surroundings, childhood friends, and beloved household items are told with poignant elegance by Miller. She describes how women bore children between storms and visits from starving Natives. Two of the most compelling images in her story about brave women involve men: one is of Stem, a mulatto with a wooden leg; the other is of a Native looking over Stem's shoulder at the line of covered wagons, knowing his world is coming to an end. Loss of family and faithful animals as well as loss of virginity are all told in a gentle, hushed manner. The general public will find this book a welcome change.?Mary Chitty, Cambridge Healthtech, Waltham, Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671521004
• ISBN 13: 9780671521004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336