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评论 (2)
出版社周刊评论
The westward expansion of the American frontier in the mid-1800s is expertly chronicled in Sickels's heartrending first novel. In 1852, the Muller party of 17 family members and friends sets out from the lush farmland of Indiana, lured by the promise of greater prosperity in California. As they walk alongside their hulking oxen and heavily laden wagons, Alice and Henry Muller, their two children and the others bravely face the unknown and unexpected. Across the plains of Nebraska, through the Black Hills, over the Rockies and across the parched deserts of Nevada, the party endures mile after dusty mile of hardship and sacrifice. Dangerous river crossings, severe weather, accidents, desertion and disease conspire to test the Mullers' love and commitment as a family until only the women and children are left, with Alice as their leader. Historically accurate in its scope and detail, this is a stirring and soulful tale of triumph over despair. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
A solid, but not stolid, chronicle about the women--feeding, caring, making-do--who survive deaths, desertions, and hardship on a small wagon train from Indiana to California in 1852. Regretfully but dutifully, Alice Muller follows farmer husband Henry with their two children on the great adventure to fulfill Henry's vision of life in the land of health, prosperity, and easy winters. Joining the company are Henry's younger brother, his strong-minded sister, and their families, a brace of newlyweds, an independent schoolmarm, and two strangers headed for the gold fields. Passing through strange and wonderful places with intoxicating names, the travelers will be marked by tragedy: deaths from cholera; a tot's demise under the wagon wheels some time after her father is drowned; Alice's miscarriage by the Bear River of a baby she names Pilgrim. Along the way, Alice, (who keeps a journal) notices jettisoned possessions and sad graves; she nurses a distraught widow's newborn in view of the Great Salt Lake. But together with the heat, the storms, deaths of exhausted animals, and treachery of rivers, there is that infinity of sky and the wild newness of it all. At the close, survivors bury the last casualty of the impossible journey and contemplate spring with confidence. Newcomer Sickels provides a low-key account of a history- making journey through the ``common little bits...the chores and smells and songs and aches''--and a thoroughly researched tribute to pioneer women, set to the creak of wagon wheels.