Customer Reviews

Where the Wild Animals Is Plentiful: Diary of an Alabama Fur Trader's Daughter, 1912-1914

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Where the Wild Animals is Plentiful is worth a look if only because it offers a (sometimes frustratingly incomplete) window on the life of a young woman in rural Alabama some 90 years back. The diary contains some tantalizing hints at a life lived in frequent solitude and understood through a powerful but circumscribed sense of place and community. Unfortunately, it also seems to reflect well the monotony and repetitiousness of life in rural Alabama at that time. The occasional points of interest come packed between pages of very detailed accounts of May Jordan's fur-buying trips with her father, including frequent comments on soil quality, lists of furs they bought and descriptions of the routes they traveled. Which isn't to say that this sort of material doesn't have some value in understanding a life like May Jordan's, but it does keep the book from being a real page turner. Elisa Moore Baldwin has done a fine job editing the diary insofar as she has left the text alone except where the reader might have had problems with comprehension (most spelling and punctuation irregularities are preserved) and used the introduction to give a more than competent sense of May Jordan's particular historical context.

Alabama in the Twentieth Century (Modern South)

Wayne Flynt quotes this journal extensively in his excellent history of Alabama, which led me to May Jordan's journal. I find it fascinating, quite moving, in fact. May was twenty five years old, a single lady who still lived at home with her parents and younger siblings. She died only a few months after her last diary entry, and a younger sister kept and preserved the notepads for some seventy years, providing some family photos as well when she agreed to publication.

May's education was sketchy, as it was rare, in that time. Despite punctuation and grammar failings, she could be quite lyrical at times: "Jack Frost has powdered the grass with A fine suit of Ice and over the shivering water he spread A carpet that will sparkle in old Hannahs rays when she rises so bright." Isn't that something?

The reason I purchased the book,Where the Wild Animals Is Plentiful: Diary of an Alabama Fur Trader's Daughter, 1912-1914 (Purchased on 07/17/2009)
by May Jordan, was because I noticed that my late husband's maternal grandfather was mentioned in the book. After reading the book, I have found references to even more of his relatives. Since I am "into" genealogy and enjoy researching our family histories, this little book has been most helpful in "bringing to life" these relatives and how they lived.