The All-True Travels and Adventures of Liddie Newton by Jane Smiley · 13 August 2007
Canning put me in the mood for some different reading. I've been perusing a lot of fantasy lately, and felt that I needed an old-fashioned fiction break. I decided to take this book off the shelf because it reminded me a bit of the spirit of the canning pioneers I'd met the week before.
When I read the cover blurbs I imagined this book as a gritty version of Little House on the Prairie, a grown-up's diary about her frontier adventure. Instead, what I read was more of a historical essay. The book is structured into two parts, but reads like it has a prologue and then two distinct sections, divided by an act that propels the main character into action.
We meet Liddie Newton, youngest of a gaggle of daughters, on the day of her father's funeral. At first, I thought Liddie was a young child, as the tone of her sisters in determining her future is in talking of a person who can't look after herself. However, as Liddie starts to narrate her own story, we learn that she is a grown young woman, albeit a willful and irresponsible one.
Faced with dim fortunes, when a kind stranger passes through Liddie's Illinois town on his way to the newly open Kansas Territory, Liddie does the only reasonable thing and marries him.
I thought that the title of the book was an interesting choice. I never got the feeling that Liddie had many adventures. Rather, she was a woman swept up in the times, more a piece of flotsam in history than someone who went out and made history.
There are several themes in this book, but the most obvious and prevalent is that of the abolitionist movement that was brewing during the time of the story. Smiley chose to set the story in the Kansas Territory, a new wild place that both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties were attempting to control.
Liddie's husband is a New Englander, decidedly anti-slavery, and a man of quiet learning. He has joined up with the New England Emigrant Aid Company and is heading out to the city of Lawrence in the Kansas Territory in order to cast his vote that Kansas not be declared a slave-state. Throughout the book he is painted in sharp contrast to southerners, mostly from Missouri, often Border Ruffians.
The value of the book for me was in reading about history with a personalized lean to it. I wasn't very familiar with the specific events of Bleeding Kansas before reading this book. I'd of course heard of John Brown and the Pottawatomie Massacre, but I didn't know much else other than Kansas was part of the great western migration around the time of the Civil War.
From the history articles that I have skimmed after reading this book, it appears that Smiley depicted the major players in politics and the time line of events in Kansas accurately. While Liddie Newton and her “All-True Adventures” are fictional, Smiley presented great detail about the political factions and the series of events that sprung up around Lawrence Kansas in 1855 and 1856.
The other strength of this book was Smiley's use of inventive chapter titles, and her further sub-titling the chapters by providing a one sentence summary on each right hand page. It was amusing to see the plot reduced to a series of one-liners, and Smiley delivered these with wit.
Even so, I wouldn't recommend this book to people that aren't interested in the history. The story itself is one that's been told countless times, and in my opinion, often better. It's the story of a young woman, Liddie, alone in the world at a period in which single women had few options. She must make do the best she can, and hope that the fates grant her a good husband with a way to support her. As often happens life is cruel, and when it becomes more so Liddie must adjust to her new hardened circumstances.
I found the first section of the book slow paced. Liddie manages to leave her home, her family, and her scant security, and then travel to the rough and uncertain land of Kansas, surviving the harsh winter and the rough southern agitators, yet the story still drags. The narrative style was such that things happened to Liddie rather than having her act which made it seem as though Liddie was just the mouthpiece for the historical events that were unfolding around her.
I did find the second section of the book more engaging. It was here that Liddie was able to develop as a person, an actor rather than an observer of the political process. She was a likable character, a bit obstinate and unwomanly for her time, and quite the thinker. She internalized much of her dialogs, so that even though she was engaged in the action, we had a window into her thoughts, which often turned to her husband and her interpretation of what his outlook on a particular situation would be. Using this method, it was as if Liddie had a ready made conversational partner, available to prop-up the dialog whenever it dragged. Though this worked as a device for exploring the political ideas that Liddie was struggling with, it did contribute to the feeling that not much was happening.
And ultimately, it appeared that Liddie's trials and adventures amounted to nothing. At the end of the book, she neither profited from her experiences nor changed her circumstances through it. Even Liddie admits that the thing she took from Kansas was her inability to be surprised by anything ever again.
I felt as if Liddie came full circle, with only the memory of the tragedies that the witnessed as testaments to her time in Kansas. I suppose it's an accurate commentary on the times and the experiences of those who attempted to settle in Kansas, but after her extraordinary journey, it felt wrong that Smiley painted Liddie as living a very similar life to that she would have if the whole affair had never happened. As the reader, I also left the book knowing more, yet not being greatly affected by the story.
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Dennis Stein · 13 August 2007, 21:07
How about some more canning… are you going to be able to come to the canning party on Thursday?
Kim · 13 August 2007, 21:13
It’s a definite maybe. I hurt my ankle this weekend, so it all depends on how it’s feeling. If I come, I’m unloading some of my lemon bounty on you; the tree keeps dropping them faster than I can drink chilled lemon water!
Chris · 13 August 2007, 21:44
Very thorough review. I feel like I’ve read this book with a different title several times. So many authors have tackled this same story it seems, with different characters of course.
Gaggle…I’m truly digging that word :) I’m going to have to use it this week.
Jackson · 14 August 2007, 19:56
Feel better, Kim!
Heather · 15 August 2007, 07:24
I kind of did the opposite of you—-I’ve taken a break from non-fiction of late and started reviewing more fiction! This sounds like an interesting premise for a book, but it’s too bad that it also sounds like it didn’t entirely live up to that premise. I enjoyed your review!
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