Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Look at K.T.
Review: This work is certainly nothing like Moo, the only other Smiley book I'd read to date. While I enjoyed that book, I REALLY enjoyed this one. The world of the Kansas Territory, seen through Lidie's eyes and described in her 19th century voice, was a revelation to me. I was only vaguely aware of this chapter in our country's history. I was charmed by Smiley's chapter titles, page titles and her consistency in remaining within a sensibility so different from our own. She truly evoked for me how it must have felt to be caught in the time and place of Kansas and Missouri just before the Civil War. I appreciate Smiley's portrayal of both the good and bad of those on both sides of the "goose question." I believe Lidie sees the many shades of gray that existed in a world we've been taught to think of as black and white. This book was an engrossing read and educational, too. Can't ask for a lot more than that!
Rating: 
Summary: Lidie: A role model for thinking past limits of paradigm.
Review: Usually, when I enjoy an author, I like everything they write. Not so with Jane Smiley. This, however, is probably her best!I believed Lidie, and I believed in Lidie! Just when I thougt she had become predictable, she did something that wasn't! And... rattling around in my head, probably forever now, is the ring of the expression, "sound on the goose question!" I had to look it up! An authentic pre-Civil War expression of pro-slavery sentiment.
Rating:
Summary: Huck Finn, Meet Lidie Newton
Review: What American writer could without trepidation set a picaresque novel with a young protagonist in the region and time of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and in the telling take up the moral questions of slavery and abolition? Doing so invites unfavorable comparison with a master and a masterpiece, even invites mockery. Then, too, there is the question of how you could retell such a tale without descending too deeply into irony. Why would you head willingly into such dangerous territory? Who but a fool would do so? Jane Smiley must certainly have considered these questions in writing The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton. She, the author of a number of exquisite books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, is too talented a writer not to have known what she was getting into. That she chose to go forward in the face of such questions speaks volumes about her courage as a writer and about the importance of her undertaking. In many ways, Smiley's courage is akin to that of her heroine, Lidie. Lidie Harkness's adventures begin in Quincy, Illinois, a river town where she is being raised by step sisters whose grudging charity seems to reach only as far as to endeavor to marry Lidie off and get her onto another family's ledger. Lidie is not the marrying kind, however. She is tall and plain and makes little effort to improve her appearance or her prospects for matrimony. She has neither talent for nor inclination toward domesticity. She cannot and does not care to sew, tat, cook or clean, the occupations of every other woman in her world. With her young cousin Frank (a wonderfully drawn "wild boy" character with elements of Huck himself), she cultivates other, eventually far more useful, skills. She can walk far without tiring, shoot a rifle and ride better than most men. She's strong and bold enough to swim across the Mississippi in summer pool and utterly indifferent to the disapproval such unfeminine acts generate. We quickly come to love Lidie for h! er independence and strength. Spinsterhood seems Lidie's lot until Thomas Newton happens into her life. He is an eastern abolitionist on his way to settle in Lawrence, K.T. (the Kansas Territories). The "goose question" is the issue of the century. Will Kansas come into the Union as free or slave? Thomas and his fellow abolitionists intend to people K.T. with free staters who may then vote the state into the morally correct column. A host of Missouri ruffians and other southerners invade K.T. equally intent on putting the state in their column. Thomas is quick to spot Lidie's marvelous qualities. She in turn is drawn to this quiet, kind, purposeful man. We wonder, as does Lidie herself, how much of this attraction is love and how much is longing for the adventure of life in K.T. Lidie and Thomas marry and set off to the dangerous frontier of K. T. With that act, the story takes on a momentum much like the historical momentum driving free and slave states toward war. We know something important must happen and we want to stay with the story to see it out. Smiley's narrative proceeds from this point with the quiet force and inevitability of a river making its way to the sea. She moves you down the page in rich three and four inch paragraphs that are like the glasses of river water her characters drink: clear at the top but dense enough to plow at bottom. At the top, we are taken with Lidie into the turmoil and adventure of K.T. It is populated with characters who might easily have stepped out of the pages of Huckleberry Finn, people who seem like they must have known Aunt Polly or encountered The Duke. As the goose question heats up in K.T., violence erupts. Lawrence is sacked and someone close to Lidie is shot in cold blood. Lidie rips away her skirts, dons a man's clothing, shears off her long hair and, packing a deadly dragoon revolver, sets off into fiercely pro-slavery Missouri to find the killer and exact revenge. However, this is not a tale of revenge. The real story, the one Smiley take! s so many risks to tell, is in the muddy depths of Lidie's emerging consciousness and the questions she asks herself. How can she value herself? What is her relationship to Thomas Newton? What is it to be married to someone you hardly know? What kind of creatures are men? What is love? How can good people differ so much on a moral question like slavery? Is all life happenstance, or can you choose to act in meaningful ways? What is there in death or after death? What surprises are there left in life? I found myself reading ever more slowly as I followed Lidie's story. I wanted not to lose any bit of it, to savor it all. I was unsuccessful in that. It is just too rich to let go after a single reading. This is a book to buy and keep and read again and again. I have a postscript for any Hollywood types who may read this. If you have any brains at all, get the screen rights to this story. It is linear in a way that lends itself perfectly to film. It is set in a powerful and compelling time. Most importantly, Lidie Newton is a character who can dominate the screen, capture the hearts of an audience and make an important statement. Such roles for women actors are too rare. Here is your chance to fix that.
Rating:
Summary: More, please!
Review: What an adventure! I found the characters colorful and well defined. I loved the gruffness of the ruffians and the rigidity of the pious New Englanders. I found this book much more memorable than A Thousand Acres. I cared about the characters much more - all of them! I would like to think that Liddie and I would have been good friends. Thank you, Ms. Smiley!
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