Lamentations

A Novel of Women Walking West

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Pub Date 01 Sep 2021 | Archive Date 28 Jul 2021

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Description

Lamentations is a novel about the first group of families crossing west to Oregon in 1842, from the perspective of the dozen women on the trip. Although none of these women left a written record of her journey, the company clerk’s daily notations provided documentation of historical events. Based on these records and the author’s own decades of work as a historian, Carol Kammen provides an interpretation of the women’s thoughts and feelings as events played out in and around the wagons heading west.

In this novel the men are in the background—and we hear the women ponder the land, their right to be passing through, their lives and how they are changing, the other people in the company, the Native Americans they encounter, and their changing roles. Lamentations is about women’s reality as wives or unmarried sojourners, as literate or illiterate observers, and as explorers of the land. 

Kammen gives voice to these women as they consider a strange new land and the people who inhabit it, mulling over what they, as women of their time, could not say aloud. We see the mental and emotional impact of events such as the naming of peoples and lands, of a husband’s suicide, of giving birth, and of ongoing and uncertain interactions with Native peoples from the Missouri River crossing all the way to Oregon. They face the difficulties of the road, the slow trust that builds between some of them, and the oddities of the men with whom they travel. These women move from silent witnesses within a constrained gender sphere to articulate observers of a complicated world they ultimately helped to shape.
Lamentations is a novel about the first group of families crossing west to Oregon in 1842, from the perspective of the dozen women on the trip. Although none of these women left a written record of...

Advance Praise

“I firmly believe this is one of the best Western books out there. It’s perfectly timed with today’s realization that women are people too. And the insights are outstanding.”—Melody Groves, author of She Was Sheriff and contributing editor for Round Up magazine

“I firmly believe this is one of the best Western books out there. It’s perfectly timed with today’s realization that women are people too. And the insights are outstanding.”—Melody Groves, author of...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781496227812
PRICE $21.95 (USD)
PAGES 320

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Featured Reviews

It is a journey like no other. A story that ignites all senses and takes you to places you could not imagine. This journey from East (New York) to West (Oregon) in the 1840s has been based on lengthy research and the development of some colourful characters. It is an emotional and tireless adventure. Travelling in the wagons and by foot alongside these brave and courageous pioneers exhausted me and also filled my heart with flutters of happiness and achievement.

Written in diary entry format, the tone and style of the vernacular made me feel the rhythm of this arduous journey. I highly recommend this read.

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