Sandra Dallas is known for her historical fiction about the ordinary people who chose to make new lives for themselves in northwest America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have read several of Dallas's earlier novels, so I knew of her work well before finding her latest novel, Where Coyotes Howl, in the library. But I have to tell you that it is the book's wonderful cover that first caught my eye. (Proving yet again that cover art is a big, big deal in the publishing world.)
Where Coyotes Howl begins in 1916 when Ellen Webster, a young woman who accepted a schoolteaching position sight unseen, arrives in tiny Wallace, Wyoming, to begin teaching in the town's little one-room schoolhouse. This part of Wyoming is not at all how Ellen pictured it in her mind before leaving Iowa, and she is a bit stunned at what she sees in every direction: the horizon. But as seems to be the pattern with Wallace schoolteachers, Ellen will barely finish the first school year before leaving to marry a young cowboy whose eye she caught almost as soon as she stepped off the train on her first day in Wallace.
The novel focuses on what life was like for the "pioneer" women of the West even well into the twentieth century. Making a go of a small ranch/farm was never a given, and the prairie was dotted with the abandoned homesteads of those who failed to make it work for them. Whole families were likely to pack up and leave quietly every spring after having desperately struggled to survive the previous winter. But life in the West was especially precarious for women. For some it would be death during the birth of a child, for others being moved to an asylum after having lost their minds due to the extreme isolation that surrounded them during the long winters.
I've had Sandra Dallas on my radar for what seems like years! And this sounds like just my cup of tea too, dealing as it does with how this life affected the women who had to live it. Excellent review, Sam.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Cath. I've found that her novels all deal with life through the eyes and experiences of the women who lived it. Women of that period don't, I think, get enough credit for what they endured and accomplished. We generally hear all about the mountain men, cowboys, explorers, etc., but very seldom about the women who made life there bearable for them and their children. I think you'd enjoy her work.
DeleteThat is a pretty amazing cover. And I have a fondness for stories about homesteading and pioneers and life in those earlier days. You said this one is memorable, does that mean you liked it?
ReplyDeleteI did like it, Lark. I used the word memorable as kind of a clue about an approach Dallas took with this one that surprised me a little - and made me appreciate even her more than I did before. She did something in this one that I didn't at all expect...but if I try to explain, I'll stumble right into a spoiler that would ruin it for everyone.
DeleteThey were howling just the other evening right out in our field. Hadn't heard a group of them for a while.
ReplyDeleteWe get them in ones and twos every so often out on the fringes of my neighborhood but I've never heard them howl unless they are trying to entice one of the neighborhood dogs into a trap. Very clever animals...real survivors.
DeleteI take the howling as a kind of greeting - "hello, the whole bunch stopped by".
DeleteOur guys show up to hunt for prey, so they don't make a lot of noise...very stealthy. Small dogs and a few cats have disappeared from the neighborhood in the last couple of years, and neighbors really have to make sure that their yards are pet-proof. Too many of the smaller dogs seem to take great joy in escaping backyards only to discover that it's pretty wild in the real world.
DeleteI have not tried Sandra Dallas but the cover and the pioneer subject matter have piqued my interest. I'm game for Westerns. The 1916 time period and the farm & ranching life remind me of Willa Cather's fiction a bit.
ReplyDeleteHer novels are reminiscent of Cather's, I think, just written in a much more modern and explicit style. I really like her novels. I think sometimes too many of us forget or don't realize just how easy we have it compared to those who grew up just three or four generations earlier.
DeleteHi Sam, I am putting Where Coyotes Howl on my list and the cover is very attractive. I have read a bit of Sandra Dallas and I enjoyed what I read so it's time for a full novel.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that 60% of homesteading families were not able to keep their farms afloat and that surprised me because growing up the stories I heard about pioneers were about hardship but ultimately success but the true story probably was very different.
I think (hope) you'll like this one, Kathy. It's a great story with some characters that might border on stereotypical in one or two cases, but it includes some characters of the type who get very little attention in historical fiction.
DeleteWhat you say about the 60% failure rate for farm failures sort of brings it all home, doesn't it? I stumbled upon the fact that it was common for women out there to lose their minds during the long winters a while back...and that stuck with me. During the winters, the women had no one to talk with except their children because their husbands were outdoors trying to keep the animals alive. The husbands were so busy doing that that they didn't have time to lose their minds to the isolation; women, on the other hand, were unable to see distant neighbors or go into town for months at a time. The asylums back East expected an influx of prairie women every spring. Can't imagine living like that.
Hi Sam, one final thing about pioneer women and the isolation they experienced. There is a novel called The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough published in the 1920's and set in 1880's West Texas that deals with this subject, a woman living by herself driven slowly insane by the howling wind. I can't vouch for it because I haven't read it but it created quite a stir when it was first published.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to look for that one. A constant wind is one of the things that could very easily drive me over the edge myself. I've experience environments like that for weeks at a time, and it was a struggle for me to go outdoors after a while. The wind doesn't even have to how to get on my nerves...just always be there.
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