Wild, Wild West: Smiley Kicks It Covered-Wagon Style

THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON

By Jane Smiley

Alfred A. Knopf Publishers

452 pages, $26

"I have made up my mind to begin my account upon the first occasion when I truly knew where things stood with me, that is, that afternoon of the day my father, Arthur Harkness, was taken to the Quincy graveyard and buried between my mother, Cora Mary Harkness, and his first wife, Ella Harkness."

What on earth could have inspired Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning (not to mention New York Times best-selling) author, to begin her latest work with such a verbose, grammatically-clumsy sentence? An attempted strive for originality in the increasingly-formulaic world of American literature? A desire to jump to the opposite end of the writing spectrum--or, in this case, to an entirely different dimension--than that of her last piece Moo, about a corrupt university? Most importantly, does Smiley's new take on an old-fashioned technique of writing work?

By the time one reads the last page of Smiley's latest, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, all of these questions remain unanswered--except for the last one. The idea of anyone writing a picaresque novel about a bold, "plain-looking," young woman settling in Kansas Territory with her abolitionist husband during the 1850s, sounds like a difficult sell, even for an extremely popular author.

Fortunately, with Lidie, Smiley proves once again that she can jump through genres with the blink of a metaphorical eye and leaves the `repetitive subject matter' label with the likes of John Grisham and Danielle Steele. She takes the astoundingly courageous story of one pioneer woman, mixes it with a potentially-dry `olde-tyme' writing style and comes up with a tale that takes a few pages to get into, but that takes great effort to try to get out of.

Lidie's story opens, as mentioned earlier, with her father's death and a room full of well-mannered and safely-married sisters fretting over what is to become of the youngest child. "She ain't been properly taught's the truth," interjects one sister as Lidie eavesdrops with great irritation from an upstairs room. Only a few pages later, however, salvation arrives--in the tall, blonde from of Mr. Thomas Newton, who begins "courting" Lidie and whisks her off to Kansas Territory (referred to as "K.T." by most of the characters in the novel).

The happy couple gets along charmingly well--until Lidie discovers that one of their trunks is filled with guns that Thomas is bringing to his friends and fellow abolitionists. Suddenly, she finds herself faced with her first doubts about the match. But she handles them in a typical Lidieesque, no-nonsense manner. "It's a fact that no bride knows what layers are in her groom," she debates to herself, "[and] that every wedding is a lottery, too. All weddings are alike in that. But it was also true that...I'd seen what I wanted to see in Mr. Thomas Newton."

When the newlyweds arrive in K.T., Lidie quickly realizes that whatever romantic fantasies she had about frontier life are nothing like the harsh environment she suddenly finds herself immersed in. Fortunately, Thomas's friends and their wives prove to be characters sparkling with personality and wit, who make the brutally cold first winter almost tolerable. Soon her adventurous nephew Frank arrives, and Lidie's life, though difficult, brings her contentment.

What most non-history-buffs may forget is that during this time period, vigilantes and slavery supporters (most of whom were from Missouri) made almost any activity that most Americans today take for granted--voting, speaking one's mind, even walking after dark--a lethal embarkment. Fights and battles occur not too far from Lidie and her circle of friends, but tragedy never hits close to home--until Thomas is shot point-blank by two Missourians.

Furious yet helpless, Lidie decides to cut her hair, disguise herself as a boy, and travel to Missouri to find Thomas' murderers. Despite the incredible danger she knows she is getting into, her good sense always keeps the upper hand. "Sentiment was a deadly thing in K.T.," she explains to the reader. "Folks back in the U.S. didn't know that about K.T., did they?" The adventures that follow, including an attempted escape north with a woman in slavery, are told with such honest simplicity that to try and recount them here would be to extinguish the spark they carry.

While Smiley's straightforward style may not be the best method of recounting the almost overwhelming challenges that Lidie faces (both physically and mentally), it keeps the book feeling genuine, and never once lets it digress into a cheap Western adventure-romance dime novel. The author relies a bit too heavily on powers of description, with enormous paragraphs dedicated to describing the finery (or lack thereof) around the heroine. But then again, such descriptions keep the authenticity of the book alive.

Other details of the novel add to its credibility. The quaint chapter titles--from "I Improve My Friendship with Mr. Newton" to "I Go Among the Enemy"--make the tone honest yet personable. The opening quotes to each chapter, from Lidie's beloved book A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home by Miss Catherine E. Beecher, adds a deliciously straight-faced irony to Lidie's own rather un-ladylike story. In addition, a mini-title that summarizes that page's subject in about five words or less is found at the top of every odd-numbered page, adding even more to the book's vividly antique feel.

By breaking away from the modern-day Midwestern world with A Thousand Acres and Moo, Jane Smiley has gambled--and won. The title character of The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton is much more than Laura Ingalls Wilder all grown up. Lidie confidently balances wonder and practicality to make herself, if not the most memorable literary heroine in recent times, than definitely an enjoyable one. "No one could describe what was true in Kansas or Missouri," she contemplates as she concludes her story. But with good old-fashioned honesty and a surprisingly plucky star, Jane Smiley manages to do just that, and very well indeed.