Marion Dane Bauer’s Land of the Buffalo Bones: The Diary of Mary Ann Elizabeth Rodgers, An English Girl in Minnesota, New Yeovil, Minnesota 1873 (published in 2003 by Scholastic).
Kathryn Lasky’s Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1932 (published in 2001 by Scholastic).
I had not expected to love these two Young Adult (YA) books so much, but they are from Scholastic, after all. These books served up fine examples of historical fiction that even included brief notes by their authors at the end on how much was based on their own family histories, historical records and accounts, and how much was made up! Some photographs of the real folks on whom characters were based are included, too. Mainly, these books were based on a mere framework of historical fact, and any details pertaining to both plot and character were largely fiction. It is interesting indeed to see how this works.
I was taken with the form of these books, the form being diary entries of varying lengths, that when collected comprise what reads like a short novel. The diary novel is a wonderful form for girls (and boys) in their early to middle teens, because of its, in these cases, pseudo-confidentiality and in most cases, intimate voice. It would be hard to resist loving the diarists of these two books.
The Depression era diary of Minnie Swift begins the day after Thanksgiving, 1932, as Mother is closing off more rooms of the Swift house due to cold temps and shortage of coal to heat an entire house. The Swifts are not destitute—indeed, they even have a housekeeper/cook who lives with them—and the father still has his job as an accountant, though the employer is in hard times, and so we watch the effects of the financial insecurity take grim sway over the adults.
Minnie has several siblings and in addition, one day her Mother’s cousin’s child, recently orphaned, lands on the Swift family doorstep. The child arrives from Heart’s Bend, Texas, and is a wisp of a thing whose tattered shoes seem to emit puffs of dust (direct from the dust bowl). Perhaps this sounds over sentimentalized and clichéd, and maybe the author was guilty of some of that, but she nonetheless tells an enchanting story in which this urchin—Willie Faye—by all appearances uneducated and unfortunate—proves a hardy, smart, forward thinking, and quite magical little being. She quite personifies a dictum that if you just believe you might make it through the worst of circumstances and if given the chance the dullest among us might shine.
There is ever so much more to the story than that, especially in terms of hardship brought on by the failed economy of the Great Depression and the ability of adults to cope and stand by their families; the importance of counting one’s own blessings and sharing them with others less fortunate; of how acts of kindness encourage both giver and receiver; of allusions to politics of the time, especially the promise of the Roosevelt presidency; and of the roles of perseverance, faith, and creativity in improving circumstances for oneself, one’s family, one’s community.
This does sound sentimental, and I’ll admit, it is a tad. It’s almost Dickensian though, including for its charm. It really is too sophisticated and charming a short novel to be denounced for its sentimentality, and I would have laid it aside otherwise. I did feel by story’s end that it might make children grown up in dysfunctional families weep for not having lived in a family such as the Swift’s, who enjoyed such camaraderie and meaning. It is a spirited, inspirational story.
1873
Nothing all that terrible happens to the Swifts—certainly nothing like what happens to the Rodgers, whose story is told in diary form by Mary Ann Elizabeth, whom her stepmother and step-siblings call Polly, much to her chagrin. Their story begins on 25 March 1873 when the family leaves England in pursuit of religious freedom and the milk and honey of fertile farmland in Minnesota. Unbeknownst to them, they are from the outset quite doomed, since besides the usual natural hardships of pioneer life they are about to encounter, Mary Ann’s father, a Baptist minister, has managed to recruit a group of colonizers who know little to nothing about farming (farmers wouldn’t have had the monetary means to emigrate, as tradesmen did). The minister has been deluded by railroad-landowner barons’ promises, a practice one imagines was not all that uncommon, and after a long and harrowing journey by ship and train, during which the pioneers experience loss of life, they arrive to paralyzing winter storm in the middle of nowhere, the site of their settlement. It is situated on the edge of prairie and they have not even trees to build houses. Interesting is the description of building and living in a sod house.
On the whole this diary evokes the hardship and also terror suffered by settlers besot by winter blizzards, drought, grasshopper infestation, and encounters with Native Americans, about whom they understood little, spoke the worst, disdained and feared. Among the minister’s redeeming qualities are his honesty and the consciousness (or is it compassion) with which he sees that white settlers will ultimately destroy Native American way of life and wildlife. In the course of the story we do come to know Mary Ann, her relationship with her family, and a friend, who it turns out is victim to beatings by her father and who eventually flees his house and the settlement to live with a band of Chippewa Indians on White Earth reservation.
Overall, this book gives an indelible impression of the extreme difficulty of pioneer life, as well as memorable characters. For me these books also serve as models of historical fiction written in fragments that collect nicely to tell a story and form a larger picture. They are chronological. Events are foreshadowed. The threads of character and event are woven throughout to hold story together. If anything, I find myself wanting more detailed description; however, I am learning it may well be a characteristic of young adult writing that the story must move to keep young readers involved. Enough details of historical nature provide historical context and teaching, but the books are otherwise spared any detail that might prove arduous and discouraging for readers.
