When the Geese Come Format: Paperback

Ella Romig's journals are engaging, even though her intended audience was only family members. Among the details of daily life, circumscribed by seasonal changes and hard work, lurk more dramatic elements; adultery, wife-beating, cultural conflicts and assimilation. Alaska history buffs, women's studies devotees, and those interested in the history of religion and medicine should enjoy her journals. The geese mentioned in the title were harbingers of spring, a symbol of optimism and renewal, as well as a food source when other supplies had diminished. Food is a reoccurring theme, as she describes gardening, egg drying, potato scarcity, reindeer meat, baking, and the difficulty of feeding travelers. Educated as a nurse and married to a doctor, Romig also writes frequently of death and disease among the missionaries, pioneers and indigenous Yup'ik. One footnote explains how lack of medical success against epidemics in 1900 favored retention of faith in shamanism. Occasional entries by Romig's husband create an unintentional, but interesting dynamic between male and female perspectives. The editor provides a family biography in an introduction, chronology, and epilogue. The illustrations are wonderful and include a map, a journal sample in Romig's handwriting, and photographs of family and daily scenes. -- From Independent Publisher

While studying medicine at Hahnemann University in Pennsylvania, Joseph Herman Romig met Ella Mae Ervin, a nursing school graduate, who shared his desires to help those less fortunate. The couple married and were sent to Alaska where they joined Herman's sister, Edith, and her husband John Kilbuck at the Moravian mission in Bethel. To keep in touch with her family, Ella recorded her daily life in letters home. When The Geese Come: The Journals Of A Moravian Missionary Ella Mae Ervin Romig 1898-1905, Southwest Alaska is a compilation of transcribed epistolary journals telling the experiences of a young woman who left the East Coast to accompany her new husband to the little-known coast of southwest Alaska at the close of the 19th century. When The Geese Come is the narrative of a devoted wife and mother constantly threatened by hardship, disease, and weather, who nevertheless grew to love her adopted country as she loved the family to whom she wrote. Ella's attitude about life was buoyant, even though she occasionally complained about the drudgery, the loneliness, and the hard work. She had the ability to see the positive and to trust in God's will to maintain her emotional balance. These letters provide the opening chapters of the life of an Alaskan pioneer family, for after their mission duty concluded, Ella and Herman eventually returned to spend the bulk of their lives in the territory. When The Geese Come is a unique biography, a splendid kind of "window in time" allowing the reader see what it was like to live and work and raise a family in Southwest Alaska at the turn of the century. -- Midwest Book Review