All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

Rating:
Summary: Lidie, slow moving but a good read
Review: This historical fiction was loaded with interesting twists and characters; however, it was a little slow moving. Yet, I still enjoyed reading about Lidie and the cast of New Englander struggling in the KT. The ever present theme of preventing slavery from moving into the KT and the challenges of life on the prairie kept my interest.

Rating:
Summary: Liddie, slow moving but a good read
Review: This historical fiction was loaded with interesting twists and characters; however, it was a little slow moving. Yet, I still enjoyed reading about Liddie and the cast of New Englander struggling in the KT. The ever present theme of preventing slavery from moving into the KT and the challenges of life on the prairie kept my interest.

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: Arduous reading, but worth the effort
Review: I do not ordinarily read historial fiction, but chose this book on the author's name. She wrote faithfully to the style of the period, using some archaic words. I was inspired to look up some of the "real" characters in the book and learn more. I thought Ms. Smiley skillfully illustrated the righteousness and fingerpointing (on both sides) that allows political situations to escalate and people to commit atrocities in the name of virtue. Well done, Ms. Smiley!

Rating:
Summary: good for fast readers; not good for plodders
Review: This book would be perfect for the 8th grade kid with a college reading level because it has got to be better than any historical fiction out there for evoking the pre-Civil War era. Lots better than Across Five Aprils or Rifles for Waitie in terms of being a readable narrative. Very believable 'adventures' in the travels. Offers a very clever variation on the Uncle Tom's Cabin flight. I still grin to think of her actually being abducted by the slave. This book served Jane Smiley well as her foray into this genre. Everything she writes suits the purpose she chose, so the results are as uneven as her targets. This one is a bullseye.

Rating:
Summary: history distorted
Review: Lidie's story is promising for the first half and then she becomes exceedingly ladylike and fails at all her attempts to do anything. It is generally known that true ladies can do little out there in the world and must languish and blame their failures on their refinement. Another problem is 'the Missourians', in this politically-charged book. All Missourians are described as cartoonish, drunken, pro-slavery villans. A political assertion deserves refutation. Here is a quote from a reprint of 'Memoirs Of The Rebellion On The Border, 1863'by Wiley Britton, a Union Missourian who fought with a Kansas Unit. ""Probably some of those who are so careless in their remakrs in regard to all the people of this state being rebels, would not like to acknowledge that Missouri, after furnishing all the men she has for the rebel army, has also furnished more men for the Union army than either of the great states Iowa or Massachusetts....a double sacrifice is put upon the Union soldiers of this state...under all the extraordinary trials and difficulties, of desolation and ruin, they have remained firm in their devotion and loyalty to the Government." The novel becomes polemical in the second half and Lidie becomes the typical ladylike and passive character. She attempts in a half-hearted way to rescue a slave, but of course merely rushed out with her into the night, the slave is caught and sold downriver. the slave will suffer in the cane fields, but Lidie goes East and lectures to admiring easterners about her adventures in rescuing a slave. Apparently this irony remains well hidden. The first half is great, the second polemical and mean-spirited.

Rating:
Summary: Very boring.
Review: I can almost always finish a book, but I couldn't finish this one. Very tedious and boring. That surprised me, because I've loved her other books, especially "A Thousand Acres."

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Having devoured other good reads by Jane Smiley I really looked forward to this book. Historical fiction is a favorite of mine, especially about the American West but I found this book very boring and depressing. Lydie never succeeds at a single thing - she loses her home, her husband, her horse, her baby. She fails at her attempt to resettle in K.T., she fails to rescue a slave, she alienates her friends, family and those that try to help her. You end the book thinking her life was a waste. I was also disappointed at the factual detail ad nauseum of the conflict between the abolitionists and the Missourians. The story became completely mired down in this conflict without proving a thing. If I hadn't been so determined to finish it (hoping for it to get better) I would have quit before part two. Ms. Smiley does write beautifully, hence the three stars but I honestly wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, unless they needed help getting to sleep.

Rating:
Summary: 'Bleeding Kansas' brought to life.
Review: As someone living in eastern Kansas, the locale of the book, and who has studied the period in question, I brought more than the usual curiosity to this book. It is filled with accurate details, but this never gets in the way of a cracking good story. Some of the twists and turns of the plot are a bit far-fetched - you could say that about writers from Solzhenitsyn to Faulkner, couldn't you? - but Smiley makes you care for the title character, a plucky lass who marries young, moves to Kansas Territory, has a child, is widowed and has to try to make her way back to her family in Illinois. The story peters out a bit towards the end. There are also good descriptions of 1850s St. Louis and Mississippi River life.

Rating:
Summary: A very good READ, it requires undivided attention.
Review: I have studied the subject of Bleeding Kansas just before the Civil War intensively. My people were the people in this book, both the slaveholders and the abolitionists and Jane Smiley has recreated them all with all their pimples, meanness, dullness, good hearted spite and spots. This is a living book, because it has heart, and if you can't find it in this book it is because you are too damn dull. I think it is an American classic, but you have got to study on it, it isn't an easy book. Put some time in and you will come to understand that although Lidie Newton talks a lot, she really must be measured by what she does. I have a first edition, and I tell you now that it will be worth some money some day. In my estimation it is the best of Smiley's efforts because it conveys the real smell and taste of the times.