A Lantern in Her Hand (Puffin Classics) [Paperback]

Bess Streeter Aldrich (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 1, 1997 | Series: Puffin Classics

After marrying Will Deal and moving to Nebraska, Abbie endures the difficulties of frontier life and raises her children to pursue the ambitions that were once her own.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Piercingly beautiful. . . . Aldrich’s pioneer woman was based on her mother, and the integrity of her depiction of life in a sod house in the late nineteeth-century Nebraska speaks to her readers. . . . In her own introduction Aldrich writes of wanting to tell her mother’s story after her mother’s death: ‘Other writers had depicted the Midwest’s early days, but so often they had pictured their women as gaunt, browbeaten creatures, despairing women whom life seemed to defeat. That was not my mother. Not with her courage, her humor, her nature that would cause her to say at the end of her life: ‘We had the best time in the world.’”—Allyson F. McGill, Belles Lettres

(Belles Lettres 20081124)

“The language is good and sturdy and dotted with imaginative metaphors and similes (‘Silence, so deep, that it roared in its vast vacuum’). If the book tries to crowd too much life into 300 pages, well, there was a lot of life: ‘We old pioneers,’ Abbie says at the end, ‘we dreamed dreams into the country.’”—Roger Miller, Milwaukee Journal

(Milwaukee Journal 20081124) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

This Bison Books edition includes Bess Streeter Aldrich's own story of how she came to write A Lantern in Her Hand. Among the other Aldrich books reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press is A White Bird Flying (first published in 1931), the sequel to A Lantern in Her Hand.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Age Range: 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Puffin; Reprint edition (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140384286
• ISBN-13: 978-0140384284
• Product Dimensions: 4.5 x 0.6 x 7.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lovely and Touching Story August 28, 2000

By Averil

Format:Paperback

When Abbie Mckenzie was young she dreamed of becoming a lovely lady like her grandmother. She wanted to paint beautiful pictures and become a world famous singer. She even gets a chance to fulfill those dreams when the dashing young doctor hears her singing, falls in love, and offers to take her East and away from Iowa with him. But people's ideals change sometimes. Abbie finds love with poor but steady Will Deal. She gives up everything to move to Nebraska with him. Many obsticals awaited them there but together they made it. Abbie and Will were barely getting by, but their children were as happy as kings. Maybe that's because their lovely mother braught them up "with a song upon her lips and a lantern in her hand". As Abbie Deal grows old, she realizes that none of her old dreams will ever come true for her but they will through her children. And as an old woman, she can look back on her life with a smile. This book is beautiful and touching and will bring tears to your eyes. I recomend this book because I absolutely loved it every time I read it.

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Enduring story of a pioneer woman August 14, 2000

By minniecatt

Format:Paperback

Like some other reviewers, I read this when I was quite young, and the story of Abbie Deal, who crossed the prairie to settle in Nebraska with her beloved husband Will, left a deep and abiding impression in my heart. Many times I have thought of Abbie Deal's story of strength and survival. She reminds me of my grandmother, who faced her own challenges in the early 1900's in the east Texas piney woods. Abbie, with her long slender fingers, shapely figure, her singing and painting talents, was born in the mid 1800's. Falling in love with Will Deal, she left her small town to travel with him to the uncivilized prairie to raise her family while facing weather disasters, insects, isolation, lack of cultural 'food' and the ever-present threat of disease and death. Could I have lived in a sod shanty or had babies with only a gruff German-speaking neighbor as midwife? Could I have kept my sanity while sweeping locusts out the door in great piles? While perhaps not the most elegant or multi-layered author, Bess Streeter Aldrich earns my respect by her straight-forward style, and by creating many of the most lively, memorable characters ever. One of the most poignant themes is how Abbie over time loses her shapley figure, her slender fingers becoming knarled by hard work, her singing and painting disused and forgotten. Yet how those attributes are 're-incarnated' in the following generations is one of the scenes that bring tears to my eyes every time I read it. If a book can be valued by the number of times that it is recalled in the reader's mind as a source of humor, comfort or warm nostalgia, then this book is among my most cherished few. Get this book, read it, love it. Become part of the community of those of us who have taken this work to our hearts.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate story. July 17, 2003

By MAB

Format:Paperback

"A Lantern in Her Hand" is such a deep story, that I could only handle reading it in small portions. Each and every time, I would close the book with such sadness in my heart. Abbie worked so hard as a mother and a wife, and sacrificed her dreams and wantings, that it made me think of what my parents might have set aside for me. Her children, when grown, bothered me so much, to think their mother old-fashioned and somewhat senile. If only we can have such fond and cherished memories when we live to be in our 80s. I recommend.