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These Is My Words |
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 These Is My Words:The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine 1881-1901 - ARIZONA TERRITORIES By Nancy E. Turner Regan Books 384 pages, 1999 ISBN 0060987510 Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart Nancy E. Turner’s debut novel These Is My Words is a compelling work of historical fiction. Based on Turner’s original family memoirs, it's a shoot-em ‘up, hard-riding, hard-loving tale of survival and what life must have really been like in the 19th-century American West. Set in the late 1800s, Sarah Prine and her family left the west end of New Mexico Territory "towards the Rio Grande and head[ed] for the greener pastures by way of Texas." Never happy in one place, Papa Prine moves the family several times. After his death, the family settles in the Arizona Territories. Turner does a marvelous job in creating a dramatic travelogue for the barely explored, barely-inhabited American Southwest. Sarah is a peppery child of fifteen when she, her Mama and Papa, four brothers, and her favorite horse, a roan named Rose, start out across the territories. Travel is difficult in a covered wagon. Sometimes the family travels alone, other times in the company of a wagon train. Sarah often laments that she feels "sore on the inside" from all the jostling. She has a cigar box where she keeps a few treasures and her diary. Writing about the journey is the only way she keeps her sanity. Sarah is a handful for her Mama. She rides Indian-style and shoots with deadly aim - as more than one Comanche and white man discover. Along the first part of the journey, Sarah finds one page from a novel whipping about the desolate region, the middle of a story about a woman who dresses in scarlet velvet and pearls. Sarah keeps the torn page safely in her cigar box and dreams of what scarlet velvet looks like and how it would feel to be dressed up all the time. As Sarah blossoms into a young woman, her parents aren’t content to stay on the new homestead and they climb onto their wagon and head back toward New Mexico. On the trail, Sarah faces floods, Indian attacks, and endures more than her share of death. She falls uneasily in love with the Calvary Captain, whose regiment is riding with them for protection. The group of travelers comes across an abandoned wagon that is filled with leather-bound books. Captain Jack Elliot allows her to keep the books and trades her for two of them (one being the novel with the missing page). As the novel progress, Sarah grows into womanhood. She marries Jimmy Reed, a boy she grew up with, but who was never in love with her. Sarah realizes she was never in love with Jimmy either, but tries her best to make theirs a happy marriage. Together they draw plans for their homestead, a big, rambling place with lots of rooms for young ones. Jimmy’s untimely death leaves Sarah with a young daughter and a ranch to run. Jack, who also fell rather uneasily in love with Sarah, returns. They marry and settle down on her ranch. Jack has retired from military life for his new life as husband and father, but the Army keeps calling. He’s the best there is and they need him. Jack answers those calls, but he always returns to Sarah. These Is My Words is an unforgettable novel of life on the frontier. In the manner of Lonesome Dove, it sweeps across the American West with a passion as enduring and powerful as those who try to tame it. |
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