Customer Reviews

Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If only Bold Spirit was twice as long a book! As it is, author Linda Lawrence Hunt had to supplement the skin and bones story with some history of Norwegian immigrants and of women pioneers in general. I've been fascinated with stories of immigrants and pioneers since I was in grade school, and this is an unexpected story of both, with an almost unbelievable twist - Helga Estby and her nineteen-year-old daughter Clara, walk across the United States hoping to win a $10,000 prize in a contest.

The trouble is, the only information that survives about the walk that took place over a hundred years ago, are newpaper accounts written as the Estbys made their way across the country. There are no diaries or memoirs, and there were no family tales passed on to succeeding generations.

Hunt reconstructs the trek with the newspaper articles and with the little information the surviving family members and acquaintances can provide. It is a fascinating story, and a surprisingly controversial one. Many people at the time condemned Helga for abandoning her husband and children in Washington State while she and Clara pursued a thoroughly unladylike adventure. From what we can tell, Helga was not out to prove anything, she was trying desperately to get the money the family needed to keep their home and land. But the strain Helga and Clara's absence caused in an already stressful time of economic depression was too much. Many of the family couldn't forgive Helga, and Clara left home soon afterward and even changed her name. We aren't told if this move and name change were due to fallout from the walk or if there was some other reason.

Bold Spirit is a great story of an immigrant family's struggle to make it in America (before there were any safety nets), of two women's unprecedented walk across an entire continent, and of an historian's search to reconstruct the remarkable events.

Linda Lawrence Hunt has crafted a real gem from her extensive research. Helga and her daughter Clara set out on their trek across America on a dare, from an anonymous sponsor, promising a whopping $10,000 if they could walk the distance in the time alotted and under strict rules. The lure of money was strong, because at the time Helga feared they were about to lose the family farm to forclosure. This little book ought to be required reading for young people, who cannot imagine what life was like for these pioneer women. Hunt takes the reader through Helga and Ole's homesteading years on the Minnesota prairie, living in a sod house, a harsh environment which included fires, tornadoes, winter blizzards and illness.

Lured to Spokane, WA life seemed much better, till the big fire of 1889. After that the big financial panic of 1893 sent life tumbling for just about everyone in the country, especially for Helga and Ole.

That Helga and Clara's feat could not be celebrated, and in fact was never talked about over the years is so sad. They deserved a parade, and instead were not even given train tickets home.

Author Hunt reminds us that silencing of family stories prevents grand children and future generations from knowing interesting and sometimes awsome personal revelations. History books dwell more on very big events and momentous catastrophies. But our own family history gives us a sense of where we came from and who we are.

Eighth grader Doug Bahr knew he had a good story when he wrote an essay in a history writing contest, and I admire Linda Lawrence Hunt for recognizing that it was a story worth presenting to a wide audience. Thank you.

I confess to a penchant for accounts of pioneer history and this amazing biography offers far more than the oft-published times, dates and places.

Bold Spirit-Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America, is simply riveting. Helga's true story, brimming with struggle, loss, hope, peril and audacious moxie, portrays a complex woman pushing prevalent cultural boundaries, while holding loyally to her values surrounding family ties and religious conviction.

Born in Scandinavia, Helga emigrated to Minnesota as a child. Following her marriage at 16, she, Ole and their growing family eventually homestead south of Spokane, Washington. Within a short time, the depression of 1893 finds them desperate for work and for funds with which to pay their mortgage.

When an anonymous donor offers $10,000 to any woman who will walk across America under stringent constraints, Helga and her 18 year-old daughter Clara accept the dangerous challenge and strike out together for New York City. Defying the era's "suitable" behavior standards for women, and confronting myriad hazardous obstacles, Helga and Clara display a determination to save their home that results in a confusing combination of respect and condemnation from those who follow their journey. Their arrival in New York heralds both an ironic ending and another beginning to this fascinating story.

Utilizing accounts garnered from extensive research and personal interviews, Linda Hunt recounts this absorbing saga with the objective of preserving the truth of Helga's gifts, tragedies and legacy. The story, stilled for many years by members of Helga's family, might have been lost altogether. We are indebted to Professor Hunt for her gift of presenting this glimpse of a truly surprising Victorian woman. Historically intriguing, poignant, engrossing and beautifully illustrated with vintage photographs, Bold Spirit is absolutley recommended for individuals and Book Groups alike.

Linda Hunt weaves a fascinating story from the old newspaper accounts of the extreme challenges and dangers faced by Helga and Clara Estby as they walked across America in a bid to win the money that could save their family farm. Once I started reading, I could hardly put the book down. (I'm an opera singer, and I read this book during my waits between entrances in a run of performances for Mozart's Don Giovanni.)

As I read this book, I expected to learn more about the role and place for women in late nineteenth century American culture, and I expected to learn about the silencing of stories that happens within families. However, I was surprised to find the story so relevant to my own history. I gained a new insight for myself from Ms. Hunt's description of "breaking the central code of a culture"; that a story simply cannot be heard when the actions of the characters in the story go beyond or "break" what is accepted in the prevailing culture.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in a glimpse of what life was like for independent thinking women at the turn of the last century, and I also recommend it for anyone who cherishes family stories.

One of the things readers might find interesting about Dr. Linda Hunt's book Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America is her final chapter on the Silencing of History. Just as Helga Esby's amazing achievement was very nearly obliterated by her bitter relatives, how many other accomplishments by others outside the mainstream have been lost?

Dr. Hunt lists several ways "theads" that may silence any story that occurs outside societal norms of the day. These threads are Breaking the Code; Underestimating the Worth (Negation by Neglect); Believing One's Experiences are Incomprehensible to Others; Sealing the Shame; Keeping the Peace and Avoiding the Anger.

Reading this book made me consider how many blanks there are in any family's history ... and in any society's history ... and wonder how many other fantastic achievements have been silenced. Surely the fabric of American history can be woven of threads beyond the ones of war, government, mechanical invention and conquest to include stories like Helga's act of desperation and bravery, undertaken at great personal peril to support a family she loved more than her own life.

Bold Spirit is an inspiring story, as is the story of Dr. Hunt's nearly 20-year effort to research and tell the tale of Helga and Clara Estby and the Estby family. Despite overwhelming obstacles in her own life, Dr. Hunt was unable to abandon Helga and Clara. For seventeen years, she searched for clues to Helga Estby and her forgotten journey, often in the blurry microfiche or dusty pages of 100-year-old newspaper accounts. Dr. Hunt traveled to Norway and throughout the United States as she pieced together scraps of information about Helga, gradually weaving them into what she calls a "rag rug" history -- colorful, strong, one-of-a-kind. Along the way, Dr. Hunt contacted widely dispersed family members who had no idea they were related to Helga nor what Helga had accomplished.

The completion of this book is a significant achievement in its own right, and I am so grateful to Dr. Hunt for sharing what she discovered about Helga. Her dedication to Helga and Clara Estby resurrected a story that needs to be heard, and should never be silenced again.

BOLD SPIRIT: HELGA ESTBY'S FORGOTTEN WALK ACROSS VICTORIAN AMERICA is an unforgettable story of Helga and Clara Estby's trek from Spokane, Washington to New York. The book is an interesting biographical and historical narrative of the mother and daughter's trip because it is about ordinary people, and how their lives paralleled the historical past in terms of women's history, social and cultural history, and immigration history. Hunt stresses the restrained lives in which Helga and Clara lived, but emphasizes their desire to walk cross-country within the contiguous United States to raise funds to save their farm; a challenging and unusual feat during the late nineteenth century especially for women and the roles they lived.

The major argument about the book is that Hunt lacked enough primary documents in order to provide a complete account of the Estby's journey. However, the crux of the story involves women's suffrage, and the Estby's struggle for acceptance within a patriarchal society that looked down on women's progressive activity, especially Norwegian immigrant women who also experienced severity as well. Hunt successfully weaves a story and history about two women who lived during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history, which is closely connected to the family. With inspiration from a history essay written by eighth-grader Doug Bahr, grandson of Thelma Estby, and the remaining sole document of the Estby's trip, a scrapbook owned by Thelma, Helga's granddaughter, which reveals the remaining account of their trip from two newspaper articles from the Minnesota Times, Hunt was able to tell the Estby's story with the addition of research and a compilation of secondary sources. Despite the limited personal accounts from Helga and Clara, the articles reveal their adventure of scenic views of their trip, which consisted of the fading American frontier of pioneering days of the past and the somewhat fearful encounter of Native Americans amidst a transformed modern America constructed Union Pacific Railroad, and the beckoning cityscapes of Chicago and New York. Ironically, upon the completion of their journey, the women would face further personal hardships in terms of finding a way to return home and discovering the deaths of two family members.

BOLD SPIRIT is an insightful and visual narrative that shows the fabric of America. Linda Lawrence Hunt proves that a story that has been hidden for centuries as a result of familial strife that involved social and cultural norms that was expected during the nineteenth century, finally can be told. Thus Helga and Clara's history is a shared history that is worth reading and understanding.

Author Linda Hunt explains in Bold Spirit the known events in Helga Estby's 1896 walk across the Country. Helga received an offer of $10,000 for a woman to walk unaccompanied across the United States if she followed certain guidelines and agreed to the challenge. The walk itself was an amazing feat, but for a woman to do it alone was almost unheard of. In 1896, women were supposed to be weak and fragile, Helga's walk in many ways shattered this opinion. Towards the end of the walk, "Her hometown newspaper in Spokane Falls now used the word `when' instead of `if' she arrives in New York, clearly impressed that she was nearing her goal."(190). This is one example of the changing opinion of many people.
Hunt first learned of Helga's journey while reading an essay written by an 8th grader who was her descendent. Linda Hunt proceeded to research what little information was available since the Estby family tried to destroy all evidence of her accomplishment. Although she did a poor job, Hunt somehow managed to scrape together the story of Helga and her daughter, Clara, walking from Spokane, Washington to New York City to save their farm.
I found the story itself a fascinating tale of the courage and determination of two women. However, I also think that Linda Hunt did a poor job conveying the greatness of this account. Due to the lack of actual facts, she loaded the book with many "what if?" type questions, feeding the reader options to consider instead of allowing the reader to use their imagination to think of different possibilities themselves. When talking of Helga's life on the prairie Hunt asks, "Which was it for Helga? The Minnesota experience gave her a place where she might have surmounted the challenges with the immigrant settler's optimism that these were temporary difficulties, worth of enduring to improve the family's fortunes. Or was she a young displaced Americanized city woman identifying more with Beret's feelings? Perhaps both were true."(28-29). For me, these extra opinions made Bold Spirit difficult to read. The suggestions greatly increased the length of the book and made sections that could be explained in a few words drag on forever.
Although Hunt spends too much time thinking about possible feelings and events, she does a wonderful job explaining their historical significance. She explains important events from Helga's childhood that most likely affected her actions later. Also, Hunt gives the right amount of information on historical figures for it all to make sense. This is seen when she explains William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley, and the election of 1896. Clara and Helga supported McKinley and Bryan respectfully. When describing Clara, Hunt says, "She also showed and independence of thought, disagreeing with her mother on the political issues surrounding 1896."(96). The election became a great topic of discussion for both women and it is important to know details of the campaigns to understand their differences in opinion.
The story of Helga Etsby's walk is worth knowing. I do not believe that reading Bold Spirit is the best way to hear the account. One can easily learn about the journey by reading a short essay on the topic instead of this book.

I found this book because it's mentioned at the end of The Daughter's Walk: A Novel. A Daughter's Walk is a novel based on a cross-country walk made by Helga & Clara Estby in 1896. Bold Spirit is a factual account of the walk, put together almost exclusively from newspaper accounts of the walk. Helga kept a diary as they walked, but her bag containing her money and her diary was stolen in New York City. Her family destroyed the letters she wrote them on her journey. Later in life, she started writing a memior, but after her death, her children burned it, wanting no reminders of what they saw as their mother's shame and betrayal.

This factual account is actually more heart-breaking than the novel, perhaps because everything is there in black and white with no invented dialogue or assumed motivations to get in the way.

I would recommend reading Bold Spirit before A Daughter's Walk, simply because A Daughter's Walk fills in blanks that you don't realize are even there until you read Bold Spirit. It's kind of like watching the movie before you read the book. Bold Spirit is the book and A Daughter's Walk is the "movie".

When my dad read Peter Jenkins's "Walk Across America" to me as an eleven-year-old, I could not consciously separate the thrill of adventure that I was invited to participate in as a reader from the disenchantment of my being a girl and therefore someone who could never replicate Jenkins's experience. I could not fathom the possibility of a woman trekking out across the country, virtually alone, on foot. The safety issues loomed large.

Now years later, I stumbled across another road-trip title I couldn't keep my eyes and hands off: "BOLD SPIRIT: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America." This book by Linda Hunt, an English professor at Whitworth College, was inspired by an eighth grader's submission to the 1984 Washington State History Essay Contest about his great-great-grandmother's trek on foot from Spokane, WA, to New York in the late 1800s. Hunt further researched and pieced together the fragments of this woman's 3,500-mile journey.

Helga Estby, a Norwegian resident of Spokane, accepted what amounted to a "dare" to be the first woman to travel on foot across the country, unescorted. An anonymous sponsor had offered up a $10,000 incentive but set particular stipulations---the woman could embark with no more than $5 in her pocket, must stop and work for any additional money needed along the way, collect signatures of politicians from key cities, wear women's "bicycle" skirts from Idaho on eastward, meet a "finish time" deadline, and more. As the story goes, Estby's motives for accepting the challenge were to save her family's farm. With eight living children, and her husband recently injured, the family had sunk deep in debt. She and her 18-year-old daughter Clara (who apparently didn't count as an escort) set off toward New York in May 1896.

As I read "Bold Spirit," I could envision other readers, those more well-read in historical narratives than I am, growing frustrated with the way the book hangs so many suppositions on its more documentable details. Yet, for the most part, Hunt differentiates between the two. I myself was never at any point frustrated with HOW the author narrated. I was, however, frustrated with the reasons for WHY she had to make educated guesses at Estby's motives and states of mind, and why this story has only recently been unearthed. Estby had actually taken copious notes throughout the journey, which according to numerous newspaper articles along the route she did complete, but those hundreds of pages of notes and any manuscript she may have generated from them no longer exist. Because of familial and societal resentment upon Estby's return (I'll leave the reasons a mystery here), her story was suppressed and two of her daughters even burned her papers after her death.

This silencing makes me think about other women who have likewise lost their voice. I often think about this in terms of silenced tragedy or trauma (which Estby's experience was, in part), but I so rarely think about silenced accomplishments, adventures, or physical feats.

the more humble among us."

Aptly sums up thirty-six year old Norwegian immigrant Helen Estby's 1886 walk with her eighteen year old daughter, Clara, 3500 miles across America. The trek was attempted for financial reasons, its completion with certain stipulations and within a seven-month time span would result in a $10,000 windfall for the cash strapped family. Unfortunately, due to negative feelings about the journey, during which Mrs. Estby left the care of her eight younger children in the hands of her husband, most of the information about it was not only not saved, but was intentionally destroyed by her descendants. Surmounting obstacles like difficult terrain, inclement weather, bad guys and a lack of money (the contract did not allow them to solicit donations) and the judgmental feelings of the many at the time who felt their behavior was in appropriate, the Estbys showed their detractors that they had the right stuff. The problem with the story, frankly, is a lack of firsthand information, which would have made its telling more personal and compelling: an okay story about a fantastic feat. Good companion reads: Tomboy Bride by Harriet Fish Backus, Grand Ambition by Lisa Michaels, In a Far Country by John Taliaferro and Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 by Stephen E. Ambrose.