Customer Reviews

Western Passage

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think everyone who lives in Oregon is a little bit fascinated with the Oregon Trail. Forth grade, if you go to school in Oregon, is spent totally studying the trail. You visit the nearest trail sites (which are everywhere), learn to make candles, and write fake trail diaries. It's a lot of fun, and ever since then I've been fascinated with the trail. Living across the river from Oregon city and going there everyday fuels that.

But I've only been able to find historical fiction about the trial written for kids and young adults. This always bothered me, because while those books written for kids may be great, they're not of an adult perspective on the great migration west. So I was thrilled when I found this book.

This is the story of Abbey, who I think is a fictional person. She endured tragedy while homesteading in Ohio and heads to Indepdence on her own to fulfill her dead husbands dream of going to Oregon. While I think the idea of a woman alone on the trail, even with hired help like Abbey has, is not historical accurate, this book is great. The descriptions are trail life is very alive and emotional, and I could really feel the emotions of the travelers as the first saw the great northwest. It is called great for a reason.

This book is very good and obviously well researched. I recommend it for anyone who loves historical fiction. I do wish I knew though if there ever was a woman who traveled without a husband or male family all the way to Oregon City, or if Abbey is a made up person entirely. I was always taught that any woman on the trail had to get immediately re married if her husband died, or if her father died and she was of marriageable age. The journey was too just much for people on their own, and woman, by the social conventions of the day, where not permitted to band together with other woman and go with friends as men were.

So I may never know if Abbey's situation was possible or not. The author obviously knows his stuff, so I'll defer to his expertness. The only thing I didn't like about this book is it really shows that the hope that Oregon City represented to travelers has just been hopelessly wasted by the economic depressing the city (well, town really) is currently in. Its not the authors fault in any way, but Oregon City is a pretty depressing place now.

Five stars for this wonderful book, that I've spent years searching for.

I also recommend along with this "Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, 1847 (Dear America)" by Kristiana Gregory, which, even though it's a young adult book, is a great historical look at the Oregon Trail.

I enjoyed the book emensly. Very interesting perspective of day to day log and viewing it from the eye's of the heroine who has never seen such things before. Exposing the new country through her eyes and not filling in with geographical information made it seem as though you were along on the journey with her. For those who have been to some of the places like the Dalles, Farwell Bend and the three island crossing Idaho it makes it all the more colorful. I thought the biographical info in the appendix was great, but was a little dissappointed that the two main characters were left out. I hope another book is written to continue the heroines story. The book fairly defines what the term "pioneer spirit" was.

One of my favorite authors as a child was Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books. I loved reading her books which often gave great and exacting how to's (how to make maple syrup, how to use a pig bladder as a balloon, how to twist hay into sticks when you run out of wood, etc.). I loved the idea of heading out west with nothing but some good horses and a covered wagon with just the essentials. In fact, while many had Barbies that were getting dressed for their prom date with Ken, mine was hitching up the horses and riding along with Jane West to the great unknown.

My brother sent me a copy of Western Passage by T.J. Hanson. I'm still trying to figure out if the fact that it is a large print edition was intentional or not since it was for my birthday.

If you liked reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and her descriptions, then this is also a book you will enjoy. In this book, you follow the heroine, Abby, every step of the way from Independence to Oregon City. And I mean every step of the way, from learning what kind of supplies would be bought, to taking a wagon across a stream, this book follows along with the first wagon train along the Oregon Trail. You are really right there. Even though this is fiction, it reads like a really good journal.

My wife was the first in our family to read this novel. She was enthralled with it, identifying well with the emphasis on a woman's perspective on this most difficult of journeys. When she finished it was my turn. What a treat. This novel is very enjoyable, and an easy read. While I admit to being particularly interested in the details of such a journey and the landscape as described by the author, I think most anyone would find it interesting. The scholar in the author is also evident by the research done to gather the material for the book. A day-by-day "log" was an interesting approach. It provided both the details of what was seen and what happened, it also gave the reader a sense of the length of the journey. About the time we got to the Snake River Plains, I tired of reading about yet one more day on the trail - then I realized how tired the travelers must have become, making the story of the journey more real for me. Additionally, it was easy to identify with the people, both Abbey and Jacob. Hope we get to learn more about their fate in the new land in a future book.

To begin with, the very comfortable spacing of print, and 12-point font, makes for easy reading. The story opens with interest, and holds one's attention page after page, until the unwanted end (I wanted the book to continue). Even the Appendices were interesting, especially Appendix A which I consulted regularly and with gratification. The story is just terrific, both as fiction, and I believe a great deal of non-fiction. The book gives the sense of utilizing episodes from many diaries and other sources. The characters, both fictitious and otherwise, are likeable as well as "human", and virtually all the development of scenes so credible. It's a nice, "clean" book-good for grandchildren in almost all respects.
I appreciate that the author did not try to fill in with information about the Oregon Trail that was learned after 1843; it made the story much more realistic. I read Western Passage with a road atlas, an Oregon topographic map, and a plastic, raised contour map. To my surprise, I learned a lot about our geography. The tale of their remarkable achievements is so vivid and yet so "daily" that it brings both the achievements and the natural humdrum of travel alive. This latter quality is rare in fiction, at least in interesting fiction. The writing is so clear and straight forward, and just plain readable, pleasant, and lively.
The details about all the supplies and equipment acquisitions, and organizational problems was fascinating, as well as that of the trail-breaking for wagons all the way along. It's hard to take in how numerous the people, wagons, and livestock were. One of the especially interesting features was the efforts emigrants made at organizing a trail government, and the vagaries through which it went. It had enough detail to make it real to the reader, but not so much that it took away from the momentum of the story and journey.
My husband and I are looking forward to getting copies for each of our descendant families. J. Newton

I loved TJ Hanson's book "Western Passage," which is a detailed story of a young woman, Abigail (Hanley) Meacham, who heads west as part of the 1843 Oregon Trail wagon train. I was delighted when I saw another book published by TJ Hanson, "Oregon Country," and could hardly wait for it to arrive after I ordered it. I was terribly disappointed that this is the same book as "Western Passage," except with updated appendixes including pictures of pioneer's tombstones and a little extra research. You don't need both books. Get this 2nd one, "Oregon Country," if you are interested in the extra research -- get the earlier version "Western Passage" if you want a cheaper version of the same story, with a little less research in the appendixes.

I am still giving this 5 stars, because the book is a terrific story, but please please be aware that it is the exact same story as Western Passage. I just wasted $33 for something I already have.

I'm still waiting for TJ Hanson to write more about Abigail's life in Oregon, after she made the adventurous trip.

I was very disappointed with this book as it was presented to me as a book of historical facts. Well, maybe if you have never known anything about anything.

This book is strickly a novel. It is to be read just for pleasure. It is a great book if you want to follow a woman who traveled by herself in a wagon train, which was NOT allowed.

The author sold it as the frist wagon train to leave MO, that was done in 1841 not 1843 as this man wants you to believe. He talked about not having a trail to follow yet on the other side of a river crossing, the wagon train would have to back track to pick up the trail again?

And I love this one, in the back of the book, the writer has a member of the wagon train beginning the city of Sacramento, wasn't that Sutter?

And at times the book was redundant. At times I was thinking okay, let's go already.

As I said, this book is strickly fictional with not much historical value. So read it as a pleasure book not if you are looking for correct information about trail passage.

This is the story of Abby, who is recently widowed and determined to finish her husband's dream of starting a new life in the Wallamet (now spelled Willamette) valley. The story follows her through her journey to Independence, getting her wagon purchased and stocked, hiring the fur trapping mountain man Jacob to man her rig and off on the trail to Oregon. This is not a page turning, racy sit on the edge of your seat type of book. This follows every bit of day to day business, from how they made their food, hunted, crossed the rivers, and kept not only themselves but their livestock alive.

The trail follows the western plains, over the Rockies, through Idaho into Oregon's Blue Mountains and finally through the Columbia River Gorge on the way to the end of the trail at Oregon City. Although I mentioned some might not find this a racy page turner, I was thoroughly fascinated and had a hard time putting the book down. The historical detail, even of the day to day part of living on the trail was fascinating -- the buffalo stampede was just heart stopping.

All in all a very good tale of a courageous woman with "sand" as Jacob called her, able to live up to and exceed the challenges of the Oregon Trail to reach her destination and achieve her dreams of a new life in Oregon City. I especially enjoyed the last of the tale, as Abby sees the Columbia River for the first time and her reaction to the beauty of that river. I am fortunate to live in the Pacific Northwest and have traveled many times along that glorious river, and the author brought all of it magically to life -- the rapids (which are long gone due to dams), the basalt cliffs, the waterfalls, Beacon Rock are all there for the reader to experience along with Abby.

This was a first rate book and I highly recommend for any lover of historical fiction or for one interested in the Oregon Trail.