| |||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Calamity Jane Told her Truth,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Calamity Jane's Letters to Her Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)
Janie's review of calamity jane's letters to her daughter, on the Amazon book site, 11.1.11Here's a fine book, from the amazingly brief period of our "Wild West" -- that short era of violent expansion across Indian lands that is stamped in most of our history books with heroic imagery and family sentiment. I know the images well from my own family's history in Texas. Calamity Jane's book casually exemplifies the way sentiment, longing, and heroism (especially her own), are scrambled with her battles and nonchalant disdain for the Native population. Is it the story true? Calamity Jane was an historical figure, an extraordinary trick rider and shot, scout, part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, a stage driver and more, but apparently one prone to making colorful claims about her adventures. I assume it's a good mix of both what happened and what she wanted to happen. Did she write these letters, or are they fabricated? I like to think they're her words, but I haven't yet seen any serious discussion of the history of the text. I'd like to! I'd like to know the story of how the package of papers, reportedly found with her at her death, made it's way to book form. One story claimed the letters went to her daughter, who used them decades later for proof of her age, to acquire federal government assistance, in Billings, MT., where an astute clerk saw their value and helped get them to the public arena. True? Someone had to do a lot of editing, too. Who? This is certainly a good collection of thrills. But it's also full of emotionally confused anger, and it's grimy and defeated enough at the end, that it's no Hollywood ending. I assume the letters are full of some author's truth, maybe Calamity Jane's own truth as she lived and imagined it. After all that talk of "truth", it's lots more interesting to get down to trying to make a "Twenty Year Cake." (Make cakes, put them in a crock, fill the crock with brandy, seal it, and it lasts just fine, if you can wait that long.) Or to imagine her story of travelling alone through Indian territory, riding on her head, red hair streaming in the wind, to convince the Indians she was no threat. Or making some money by cooking for a friendly local gang of outlaws. She sees only her own tragedy, but gives us plenty of spice along the way. Is this her truth? For the moment - I'll just say, yes, it is. Jane Yett 11.1.11.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I know it's a novel, but I want to believe it's real,
By
This review is from: Calamity Jane's Letters to Her Daughter (Mass Market Paperback)
You'll love and treasure this book, a heart-rending series of letters from Jane Cannary Hickok (Calamity Jane of fame) to the daughter she gave up for adoption to a wealthy and genteel family. Jane teaches herself to write so she can leave a series to letters to her daughter, and the letters are full of misspellings and grammar errors, written as she would speak.Wonderful fictional telling of a brief era that ended with the death of Calamity Jane and her contemporaries.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
