I love learning about little-known historic figures, especially women, whose remarkable lives have been overlooked. Author Kathleen Grissom does a marvelous job slipping fiction in between the known facts about Crow Mary, as the whites called her, or Goes First to her own Crow people, to take us deep into the life of a young woman who lived in two worlds but always remained true to herself and committed to her culture. Though the story is difficult, in some ways, it is nonetheless beautifully told and a compelling read.
The New York Times bestselling author of the book club classics The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything returns with a sweeping and “richly detailed story of a woman caught between two cultures” (Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author) inspired by the real life of Crow Mary—an Indigenous woman in 19th-century North America.
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in…
Earling's choice to explore language as she wrote about a young woman -- a girl, really -- best known as an interpreter was brilliant. It takes some effort to get into the rhythm of the language and follow the story -- not a strictly linear narrative -- but the payoff is a deeper understanding and compassion for a woman kidnapped by an enemy tribe, sold into marriage, and conscripted into a long and difficult journey. Earling's Lewis & Clark are not the brave men of myth and written American history. Yet the real story is Sacajawea, and her deep spiritual connection to the land they crossed, a connection that kept her and her young son alive.
Winner of the American Book Award Winner of the Montana Book Award Winner of the PNBA Book Award
"In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe's rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby's cry."
Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly…
I came across this book while researching the Black experience in late 19th century Montana for my historical short story collection featuring "Stagecoach" Mary Fields. Johnson gives us a highly readable mix of historical fact and analysis blended with stories about the Gordon family and Rose in particular, and the important role they played in one small Montana town from the 1880s to the 1960s. By telling Rose’s story, he’s able to tell us the larger story of the Black community in the state, one not known for racial diversity, and it’s fascinating!
Born in the Barker mining district of central Montana Territory, Rose Beatrice Gordon (1883-1968) was the daughter of an African American chef and an emancipated slave who migrated to the West in the early 1880s. This book tells the story of the Gordon family―John, Anna, Robert, Rose, John Francis Jr., George, and Taylor―and pays tribute to Rose, who lived most of her life in White Sulphur Springs. In her youth, Rose excelled academically and distinguished herself as a musical performer. As an adult, she established her economic independence as a restaurant owner, massage therapist, and caregiver. She also made a…
The stories in All God’s Sparrows imagine the life and heart of Mary Fields (1832-1914), a real-life woman born into slavery who spent her last 30 years in Montana, ten of them working with the Ursuline Sisters at St. Peter’s Mission. In Montana, she found freedom and community, and her own place in the West, bringing solace and justice to those in need. The collection brings together three stories originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and a new novella, “A Bitter Wind,” set in 1897 and 1914, in which Mary helps a young picture bride solve the mysteries of her fiancé’s death, his homesteading neighbors’ bitterness, and her own future.
