The Overland Trail (Women of the West) - Softcover

Lee, W. W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812555287 ISBN 13: 9780812555288

Publisher: Forge, 1997

Synopsis

Pregnant and alone after losing her husband on the Overland Trail in 1846, America Hollis is rescued by a family that steals her newborn baby and sets out with a young Paiute woman to find her daughter. Reprint.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Despite occasional compelling scenes based on events drawn from actual diaries of women emigrants, Lee's (Cannon's Revenge, 1995) latest ought to be subtitled ``The Perils of a Politically Correct Heroine Crossing the Continent.'' Even the villain is a second-rate stereotype in this exaggerated melodrama posing as historical fiction. Pregnant, her lover dead, and pressured by her wealthy Philadelphia family to marry, a heroine with the unlikely name of America weds Will Hollis, a young lawyer bent on emigrating west. Hollis is less a character than an explanation for America's presence on the wagon train. In fact, her friendship with Catherine Welborne, a mail-order bride traveling to Oregon, is more believable than her marriage, and her indignation at Isaac Moore's beating his wife seems more deeply felt that her affection for Hollis. In an orgy of heroine-like acts, America champions Indian rights and the abolition of slavery, decries domestic violence, saves the life of Celeste Hayes when her long skirts catch fire, and buries Hollis after he is accidentally killed. Meanwhile, inept the villains, Reverend Tarleton Sandford and his wife, Muriel, are as devoid of virtue as America is of fault and even less believable. Their one successful act of villainy--the burial of America when she lapses into unconsciousness after childbirth, and the theft of her baby--lacks credibility. Not that credible is a prerequisite, as Lee demonstrates in the climax here when America, rescued from her premature grave by the Paiute Indians, steals back her daughter from the Sandfords and rides off to marry the half- Shoshone Black Wolf after first single-handedly rescuing him from hanging. Improbable plot, poor characterization, and stilted dialogue keep this from rising even to the level of good melodrama. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

In the second volume of the publisher's Women of the West series (after Kathleen O'Neal Geer's Thin Moon and Cold Mist), Lee imagines an unusual heroine?an expectant mother who becomes a gunslinging outlaw by the end of her perilous cross-country journey. It's May 1846. After an uneventful trip from Philadelphia, America Hollis, 21, and her new husband, Will, arrive in Independence, Mo., to rendezvous with the wagon train that will take them to the Oregon Territories. Four months pregnant with the child of her dead lover, America is slowly getting to know the Harvard-educated lawyer she hurriedly married only three months ago. Among their fellow wagon-train travelers are the mean-spirited Reverend Sanford, his wife, Muriel, and their son, Lem. After Will dies in a freak accident, the Sanfords reluctantly take America into their wagon, but in time they abandon her but keep her newborn daughter, Sierra. The plot picks up speed as America and her newfound Paiute Indian friends, including the handsome Black Wolf, search for Sierra, leading to a dramatic conclusion. Lee, author of the Jefferson Birch western series, has written an inspiring tale, adding to the genre's growing number of resourceful frontier heroines.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0812555287
• ISBN 13: 9780812555288
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320