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The Diary of Mattie Spenser
Sandra Dallas, 1997
St. Martin's Press
229 pp.
In Brief
No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colerado frontier. Mattie's only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of a new marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As she and Luke make life together on the harsh and beautiful plains, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the girl he lieft behind and finds love where she least expects it. Dramatic and suspenseful, this is an unforgettable story of hardship, friendship and survival. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—June 11, 1939
• Education—B.A., University of Denver
• Awards—numerous, see below
• Currently—lives in Denver, Colorado, USA
A journalism graduate of the University of Denver, Sandra began her writing career as a reporter with Business Week. A staff member for twenty-five years (and the magazine’s first female bureau chief,) she covered the Rocky Mountain region, writing about everything from penny-stock scandals to hard-rock mining, western energy development to contemporary polygamy. Many of her experiences have been incorporated into her novels.
While a reporter, she began writing the first of ten nonfiction books. They include Sacred Paint, which won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Western Heritage Wrangler Award, and The Quilt That Walked to Golden, recipient of the Independent Publishers Assn. Benjamin Franklin Award.
Turning to fiction in 1990, Sandra has published eight novels. Sandra is the recipient of the Women Writing the West Willa Award for New Mercies, and two-time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award, for The Chili Queen and Tallgrass. In addition, she was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Assn. Award, and a four-time finalist for the Women Writing the West Willa Award.
The mother of two daughters—Dana is an attorney in New Orleans and Povy is a photographer in Golden, Colorado— Sandra lives in Denver with her husband, Bob. (From the author's website.)
Author’s Note
Because of my interest in the West—I wrote nine nonfiction books about the West before I turned to fiction—I’m a sucker for women’s journals of the westward movement. I wanted The Diary of Mattie Spenser to have the elements of a novel but to read as much like a 19th century journal as possible. Mattie is a woman of her time, not a current-day heroine dressed in a long skirt, and the language is faithful to the Civil War era. I added dialogue to keep the diary entries from being too stilted for contemporary readers. Making the diary believable has had an unforeseen consequence: Many readers believe it is an actual journal. They’ve asked where the diary is kept and what happened to the characters after the journal ended. One reader accused me of rewriting some of Mattie’s entries because she recognized my style. Another sent me a copy of an early Denver photograph, asking if the man in the picture was one of the characters in the book. —Sandra Dallas (From the author's website.)
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Critics Say. . .
A wonderfully vivit portrait of frontier life...Mattie is a marvelous creation...It's a story that's genuinely moving and impossible to put down.
Rocky Mountain News
One of the bright new voices in historical fiction…Dallas’s authentic period details, her colorful characters, and most of all Mattie herself lend charm and emotional truth to this appealing marital and pioneering adventure.
Publishers Weekly
(Adult/High School) The significance of a planting of yellow tulips in an Iowa garden becomes evident at the end of this beguiling novel of the Civil War home front. Immature, overconfident, congenial, and flirtatious, newly wed 18-year-old Alice is left with her stern, repressive mother-in-law on a small farmstead when her husband Charlie "goes for a soldier." The book is comprised of the letters Alice writes to her sister over a period of three years to relieve her frustrations and to offer advice on fashion, love, and society. Alice is an outstanding quilter and each chapter is prefaced with a paragraph of information on quilting details. The letters take readers through wartime difficulties of isolation, food shortages, cruel gossip, loss of reputation, and the complexities of a small, closed community. Through the occasional letter from Charlie as he enters into Army life on the Union side, readers see the rigors of camp life, horrors of battle, and imprisonment in the notorious Andersonville prison camp. Alice's growth, brought about by these circumstances, is natural and understandable, as is the slowly emerging bond of affection between the young woman and her formidable mother-in-law. This unfolding maturity of insights lends realism to the light concerns of fashion, sociability, and other trivialities that engage interest in the opening pages. —Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal
With the convention of finding a diary in an elderly neighbor's attic trunk framing her story, Dallas creates a ripping good read from this fictional journal. Beginning in 1865, a week after her wedding in Fort Madison, Iowa, Mattie Spenser confides to her diary as she and her new husband travel by Conestoga wagon to the Colorado Territories. The building of a sod house; the births and deaths of children; the melting of narrow attitudes toward "loose" women, Indians, and Negroes; and the growth of Mattie as a person are all visible in these pages, full of what seems like genuine details of prairie life. There's enough about her complicated relationship with her husband to satisfy readers longing for romance and resolution. If some of the hooks in the tale, which include wife beating, incest, miscegenation, and adultery, are a bit contrived, the pace is lively and engaging. —GraceAnne DeCandido
Booklist
The buoyancy and simple, uncloying sweetness of spirit of Dallas's appealing protagonist—the young wife of a homesteader in Colorado Territory—give a bright, fresh shading to the tragedies and small sharp joys of 19th-century frontier life. Again, as in The Persian Pickle Club (1995), Dallas has caught the lilt and drift of regional speech. At 22, plain Mattie is astounded that handsome Luke Spenser desires to marry her—he has been keeping company with pretty Persia. Nonetheless, he chooses her, and they head out from Iowa in May 1865 to the homestead Luke has already planted in Colorado Territory. There are pleasures along the way: nice folks, and quiet days spent with Luke, her "Darling Boy." But Luke, who doesn't smile at her jokes, works very hard and doesn't like her to flirt with him. As for the marital act: "I still think it's overrated." Danger comes soon enough, and it's Mattie's quick shooting that saves two lives, although she doesn't seriously contradict Luke's dismissive observation that it was a "lucky shot." Once they arrive in Colorado, though, Mattie is disappointed by the homestead (out on the plains, she finds, there is "too much sky"). Her education in the real travails of people, particularly women, separated from the cushioning platitudes and quick-step judgments of home, begins immediately. A despised "slattern" proves herself a true friend; Mattie witnesses women weakened by too many births, another abused and horribly killed, and murder and torture by both whites and Indians. She also experiences wild joy and then tragedy, suffers many dangers, and is rocked by Luke's sudden betrayal. ("How could he ever again be my Darling Boy?") Yet torment yields to endurance and a kind of compassion. Tragedies and sad little domestic dramas are muffled within the decency and humanity of a character whose understanding—but not essence—changes with events. A modest, appealing novel with a convincing reach into Colorado's plains and skies.
Kirkus Reviews
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