I'd love to meet Jane Smiley. She writes these hige, sprawling novels about completely disparate places and people and events, and somehow each one rings true. Lidie Newton is a woman who is swept up in the abolitionist movement in Kansas Territory, and this is the story of what happens to her when she moves West. Because this novel is dependent on so much historical detail, it would be easy for it to fall prey to the dreaded Gump Factor (where the main character runs into every historical being and is present at every historical event. I hate that.) Smiley avoids that. Of course, this is a novel so there are some events that wouldn't have happened to your average 18th century woman, but that's OK because it's fiction.
This bogged down for me a little bit in the middle, only because I was really into the way the story was going and it abruptly changed course. I was loving it again by the end. I also learned some interesting historical factoids which I've been reminded of several times in the past few days, which is always cool.
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