Jane Smiley's game heroine prides herself on being useless, ill-tempered, and not that well behaved; in Illinois, circa 1855, a plain, penniless, parentless young woman should be anything but. Lidie, however, can ride a horse--and not sidesaddle, either--walk forever, write, and argue. All of these abilities will stand her in good stead when she and her new husband, Thomas Newton, make their way to K.T. (Kansas Territory) with a case of Sharps rifles and a desire to keep Kansas from slavery. Alas, "In K.T., it was often the case that every version of every story was equally true and equally false."

The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton is a Little House on the Prairie for grownups. Lidie's accounts of homesteading, from buying a new stove to coming upon the finest horse in the territory (and among the finest in literature), combine character, charm, and social history. (Smiley's chapter titles alone--which include "I Eavesdrop, and Hear Ill of Myself" and "Papa Is Cordial"--are worth the price of admission. "Papa," by the way, is an aged anti-abolitionist who wants to marry her.) But there is also menace. Early on, for example, Lidie pastes her home with "leaves of The Liberator and some other papers that Thomas had brought with him from the United States. This, he said, would serve the threefold purpose of advertising our views to our visitors, reminding ourselves of the arguments to be made in the cause, and keeping out the wind. Every leaf, according to the new laws of Kansas Territory, was treasonable."

Though Lidie once conjured up paradisiacal images of a "(weathertight and cozy) cabin," surrounded by fruit-laden trees, pure streams, and verdant grass through which she'd dally, "perhaps in pursuit of a pretty little cow," their tiny home is freezing and their situation fraught with fear. The Newtons' first months are filled with the exhilaration of new marriage and the difficulties of life in a hostile environment. Winter kills off several of their fellow radicals and "the southerners" seem bent on violently removing the rest. Lidie unfortunately makes the mistake of finding the season more formidable: "The prolonged frigid weather made even the prospect of being hanged, shot, dismembered, killed or otherwise cleared out rather an abstract one. The possibility of being frozen to death was distinctly more likely."

In her acknowledgments, Smiley thanks David Dary, the fine historian of the West, and The All-True Travels is a superb reinvention. Who would have thought that a shipboard meal would be more like a pitched battle, or that--as Lidie soon discovers--sentiment would turn out to be "a cruel joke in K.T."? At a certain point in the novel, however, the historical and social fabric becomes almost overwhelmingly dense. But after her hero and heroine are ambushed by southerners, Smiley pares down the details and explores Lidie's character and conscience (as she is forced into a series of memorable guises), and her "all-true travels" take on emotional and ethical complexity.


From Publishers Weekly
An immensely appealing heroine, a historical setting conveyed with impressive fidelity and a charming and poignant love story make Smiley's (A Thousand Acres) new novel a sure candidate for bestseller longevity. Lidie Harkness, a spinster at 20, is an anomaly in 1850s Illinois. She has an independent mind, a sharp tongue and a backbone; she prefers to swim, shoot, ride and fish rather than spend a minute over the stove or with a darning needle. That makes her the perfect bride for Bostonian abolitionist Thomas Newton, who courts and marries her in a few days while enroute to Lawrence, K.T. (Kansas Territory), with a box of Sharps rifles. As the newlyweds gingerly come to know each other, they are plunged into the turmoil between pro-slavery Border Ruffians from Missouri and K.T. Free Staters, an increasingly savage conflict that presages the Civil War. Smiley evokes antebellum life with a depth of detail that easily equals Russell Banks's exploration of the same terrain in Cloudsplitter (Forecasts, Dec. 1, 1997). Her scenes of quotidian domesticity on the prairie are as engrossing as her evocation of riverboat travel on the Mississippi. Through an exquisite delineation of physical and social differences, she distinguishes and animates settings as diverse as Lawrence, Kansas City, St. Louis and New Orleans. As Lidie and Thomas experience privation, danger and the growing pleasures of emotional intimacy, and as tragedy strikes and Lidie pursues a perilous revenge, Smiley explores the complex moral issues of the time, paying acute attention to inbred attitudes on both sides of the slavery question. Propelled by Lidie's spirited voice, this narrative is packed with drama, irony, historical incident, moral ambiguities and the perception of human frailty. Much of its suspenseful momentum derives from Smiley's adherence to plausible reality: this is not a novel in which things necessarily turn out right for the heroine, for women in general, for blacks or for the righteous. Lidie's character deepens as she gains insight into the ambiguous and complex forces that propel men and women into love and compassion, hatred and violence. In the end, this novel performs all the functions of superior fiction: in reading one woman's moving story, we understand an historical epoch, the social and political conditions that produced it and the psychological, moral and economic motivations of the people who incited and endured its violent confrontations. 200,000 first printing; Random House audio. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A woman whose abolitionist husband is murdered in 1850s Kansas cuts her hair and tracks his killers to Missouri. A 200,000-copy first printing.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
In the decade before the Civil War, Americans staged what was essentially a full dress rehearsal in the West. Neighbors were divided from one another by the single overriding issue of slavery, which rendered Kansas and Missouri a volatile mix of zealotry, violence and hatred. Smiley's latest novel is a formidable feat of imagination that brings vivid complexity and passion to those turbulent times and regions. Fields's narration is no less an accomplishment. Characters come powerfully to life in her reading. She makes them feel like they come from somewhere, that they each have histories and backgrounds and were not created out of thin air. This is especially true for Smiley's heroine, Lidie Newton, who accompanies her new husband, an abolitionist, to the West, where she will lose everything and be tested well beyond her experience. Fields's Lidie is a clever, spirited woman who makes any number of mistakes, some tragic. But the most moving impression left by Fields's reading is the earnestness of Lidie's self-inquiry and her yearning to discern the right path in ambiguous surroundings. M.O. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Each of Smiley's three most recent novels is a radical departure from the last. She dramatized midwestern farm life in A Thousand Acres (1991), satirized academia in Moo (1995), and now brings her acumen and magic to historical fiction, transporting her expectant readers back in time to the frenetic years leading up to the Civil War. The story begins in Quincy, Illinois, where 20-year-old Lidie has to decide what to do with her life. Tall, plain, athletic, she has zero tolerance for the severe limitations imposed on her sex and is extremely skeptical of marriage, but when Thomas Newton, a self-possessed New England abolitionist, comes to town on his way out to the Kansas Territory, she responds without hesitation to his suit. Thrilled to be off on an adventure, she doesn't stop to wonder why her husband values her fearlessness and skill with horse and gun over her feminine wiles, but she finds out soon enough. Kansas is a rough and violent place, and abolitionists are a despised and endangered breed. Their life is one of deprivation and danger, but Lidie, an entrancing narrator, finds marriage every bit as challenging as poverty, winter, and war. Tragically, she doesn't get a chance to learn what love really is because Thomas is murdered within the year. A bit mad with grief and determined to exact revenge, Lidie disguises herself as a man, but she soon realizes that few things are as simple as fanatics make them out to be. Gloriously detailed and brilliantly told, this is a hugely entertaining, illuminating, and sagacious vision of a time of profound moral and political conflict, and of one woman's coming to terms with the perilous, maddening, and precious world. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
Lg. Prt. 0-375-70223-7 Smiley (Moo, 1995, etc.) scales another peak with this bighearted and thoughtful picaresque novel set mostly in the Kansas Territory shortly before the Civil War. Narrator Lydia ``Lidie'' Harkness grows up in Quincy, Illinois, a tomboyish burden to her several older stepsisters, and leaps at the chance to marry Thomas Newton, a soft-spoken abolitionist who's bent on helping the ``free-staters'' dedicated to protecting Kansas against those who would make it a slave state. Missourians crossing the border wreak havoc on such hotbeds of abolitionist activity as Lawrence (near which the Newtons settle), and Thomas is soon one of many casualties. The ``disputacious'' Lidiewho'd become an even more ardent free-stater than her husbandthereafter sets off on an eastward journey seeking revenge and finding instead an unexpected empowerment. Her adventures while disguised as a boy (``Lyman Arquette''), reporting for a proslavery newspaper, and helping a woman escape a plantation are recounted with a zest and specificity that beg comparison with Mark Twain's portrayal of the immortal Huck Finn. Lidie is a splendid creation: a forthright, intelligent woman who recognizes, long before she can articulate it, the kinship of women relegated to submissive housewifery with people who are literally bought and soldand who acts to change things. Surrounding her are such agreeable supporting characters as silver- tongued, slave-owning widower ``Papa'' Day, ``radical'' Louisa Bisket (who considers corsets symbolic of male tyranny), and the superbly unctuous David Graves, blithely unimpeded by loyalties of any variety (``My principle is to serve both sides, to have no sides, indeed, but to serve all!''). Not all of Smiley's obviously scrupulous research is transmitted successfully into storyLidie does mull over political and social complexities a mite compulsively. Little else goes awry, though, in the richly entertaining saga of a woman who might have been well matched with Thomas Berger's ``Little Big Man,'' and whom Huck Finn would have been proud to claim as his big sister. (First printing of 200,000) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
April 1998

Of Jane Smiley's new book, a work of historical fiction called The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, Kirkus Reviews writes, "Smiley scales another peak with this big-hearted and thoughtful picaresque novel"; she has created a heroine "whom Huck Finn would have been proud to claim as his big sister."

When Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, marries Thomas Newton, a New England abolitionist, and moves to Kansas Territory, she has no idea what lies ahead. The year is 1855, and her new home is about to become the battleground for the clash between the abolitionist Free-Staters and the slaveholding Missourians that would come to be known as "Bloody Kansas." It is the eve of civil war, and taking up the abolitionist cause, Lidie will find herself in great danger. Her husband will be murdered, and Lidie, disguised as a man, will venture into Missouri to find his killers — a spy in slave territory, a woman in a brutally male world, and a witness to the conflict from the other side. As Publishers Weekly writes, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton is a novel that "performs all the functions of superior fiction: in one woman's moving story we understand an historical epoch, the social and political conditions that produced it, and the psychological, moral and economic motivations of the people who incited and endured its violent confrontations."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive -- a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at 20, making a good marriage -- to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State. Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you -- where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question. And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers -- a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity -- and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself.

SYNOPSIS

Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, returns with a novel that explores one of the crucial moments in American history and culture, the conflict between abolitionists and proslavery settlers over the future of the Kansas Territory in 1855-'56. Smiley's narrative goes far beyond any simple historical novelization or any didactic examination of the slavery question; The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton presents a multifaceted picture of the developing American character, as shaped not only by such explosive issues as slavery but also by the difficulties of the frontier and the day-to-day relationships between men and women.

FROM THE CRITICS

Los Angeles Times

A gripping story about love, fortitude, and convictions that are worth fighting for.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times

In a completely new voice for her she authentically mimics a 20-year-old mid-19th century woman...her novel impressively recreates a violently contenious period in American history.

Publishers Weekly

An immensely appealing heroine, a historical setting conveyed with impressive fidelity and a charming and poignant love story make Smiley's (A Thousand Acres) new novel a sure candidate for bestseller longevity. Lidie Harkness, a spinster at 20, is an anomaly in 1850s Illinois. She has an independent mind, a sharp tongue and a backbone; she prefers to swim, shoot, ride and fish rather than spend a minute over the stove or with a darning needle. That makes her the perfect bride for Bostonian abolitionist Thomas Newton, who courts and marries her in a few days while enroute to Lawrence, K.T. (Kansas Territory), with a box of Sharps rifles. As the newlyweds gingerly come to know each other, they are plunged into the turmoil between pro-slavery Border Ruffians from Missouri and K.T. Free Staters, an increasingly savage conflict that presages the Civil War. Smiley evokes antebellum life with a depth of detail that easily equals Russell Banks's exploration of the same terrain in Cloudsplitter (Forecasts, Dec. 1, 1997). Her scenes of quotidian domesticity on the prairie are as engrossing as her evocation of riverboat travel on the Mississippi. Through an exquisite delineation of physical and social differences, she distinguishes and animates settings as diverse as Lawrence, Kansas City, St. Louis and New Orleans. As Lidie and Thomas experience privation, danger and the growing pleasures of emotional intimacy, and as tragedy strikes and Lidie pursues a perilous revenge, Smiley explores the complex moral issues of the time, paying acute attention to inbred attitudes on both sides of the slavery question. Propelled by Lidie's spirited voice, this narrative is packed with drama, irony, historical incident, moral ambiguities and the perception of human frailty. Much of its suspenseful momentum derives from Smiley's adherence to plausible reality: this is not a novel in which things necessarily turn out right for the heroine, for women in general, for blacks or for the righteous. Lidie's character deepens as she gains insight into the ambiguous and complex forces that propel men and women into love and compassion, hatred and violence. In the end, this novel performs all the functions of superior fiction: in reading one woman's moving story, we understand an historical epoch, the social and political conditions that produced it and the psychological, moral and economic motivations of the people who incited and endured its violent confrontations.

Library Journal

A woman whose abolitionist husband is murdered in 1850s Kansas cuts her hair and tracks his killers to Missouri.

Library Journal