All tagged epistolary novel

Lost Journals of Sacajewea

Certain stories resonate in history. Specific people become fascinating characters lodged in the minds and hearts of a nation; their feats become a part of culture. Yet, often these fictions fail to realistically reflect the history; over time characterizations and backgrounds shift. This is especially true for famous historical figures who left no written records, many of them women and people of color. Such has certainly been the case with Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, particularly with regard to the young Shoshoni woman who accompanied them for most of their journey. Even the spelling of her name—Sacagawea (derived from Mandan for “Bird Woman”) or Sacajewea (from her native Shoshoni meaning “boat-launcher) is uncertain. And yet, she was a woman with a voice, even if written history fails to capture any of her actual words. Debra Magpie Earling’s The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (May 2023) provides her a voice and a story in a spectacularly crafted novel that provides Sacajewea with her own journals, in an answer of sorts of the famous Journals of Lewis and Clark.

Gilead

Certain novels are slow and contemplative; they paint a portrait of a life or a time using carefully selected shades and hues to capture a mood. There may not be much action beyond that of memory, but it is enough. More than enough even. Marilynne Robinson’s winner of the Pulitzer and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead (2004) is one such novel. Contemplative, slow-burn writing like hers gets at the big questions of life with a hefty serving of earnest feeling sprinkled throughout. Written in first-person, Gilead is one man’s reflection upon his life, his family, and the meaning of human goodness.

The Wright Sister

Through the intimate voice a sister writing her closest living brother, as well as the thoughts in her Marriage Diary, The Wright Sister (2020) describes and unpacks the most private of life’s details, but in succinct, often poetic or humorous, terms. The novel progresses through Katharine’s letters to Orv and her marriage diary entries from fall of 1926 to spring of 1929 when she faces her first truly solo flight.