Excerpt from The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It is his job to shout "Bridge!" when we are about to pass under one, as there is often scant headroom. Those of us sitting on the flat roof, usually only myself and a man in a red wig, throw ourselves onto the deck until it is safe to regain our seats. Dennis was severely reprimanded yesterday when his warning came too late and a drunk drummer and his blind dog were knocked into the canal. Today I left the boat at one of its many stops to walk along the tow path, avoiding the mud and dung as best I could. At each landing stop, a new boy appears with a broom to sweep the dung into the canal.

Men jump on and off the boat all day, mainly quarreling and laughing in a loud way as they load and unload goods, or to hitch a ride to the next landing. As we slowly move west, there are more languages, people speaking what I think is Swedish, and German, and there is more noise, as if people's voices have to cover longer distances. There are more oxen and mules. More guns. More men than women. Ladies wear simple cloth sunbonnets, their skirts cut short to keep them from the sewage. A number of people are missing some part of themselves, eyes and whole rows of teeth and fingers and legs, and have added things too, like glass eyes, and hooks for hands. I saw a bargeman with shiny red streaks on his bald head, and I heard someone say he'd been scalped by Apaches in the Mexican War. That is the other thing. There are Indians.

* * *

One more day until we reach Buffalo. An elderly woman in mourning holding by the neck a boy with a black eye boarded the boat this morning, and a young clergyman who looked to be drunk. I saw him again, leaning against the railing at the stern of the boat, and I bid him good morning. His collar was stained with mud and he smelled of piss. There was something false about him, not that priests do not drink or need a bath now and then. He seemed very pleased to be addressed. He said he was on his way to Niagara Falls, where he'd been appointed rector at a Methodist church. As I edged my way past him, he said, "Say, you couldn't loan me a fiver, could you?" "No," I said, and he put out his foot and tripped me.

* * *

Maddie wrote that when I reached Buffalo, I was to find my way to the Steamboat Authority, and that is what I did. As I could not spare the six dollars to book a cabin, I paid three dollars for a place in steerage, where I was given a soiled pallet and a wooden stool and a bucket without a handle. The clerk did not ask me my name. No one asked me my name.

It will take three days to reach Chicago. I bought a bag of peanuts, some pork rind, and a loaf of bread on the dock, but I finished them the second night. I'm hungry. I also smell bad. The boat is named The Queen of the West and at night I can hear piano music and the stomping of feet and shouting as the passengers dance in the saloon above me.

During the day, I read Villette by Miss Charlotte Bronte. It is one of Maddie's favorite books and she recommended it, perhaps because I'd once told her I hoped to be a schoolteacher. I like it very much, especially as Lucy Snowe is plain like me, but it is hard to concentrate, and I am unable to read it as it deserves to be read. It is too dark below deck to read at night.

* * *

The streets of Chicago are deep in mud, sometimes reaching as high as the bed of a wagon. The river is full of sewage and dead cows. I made my way to the shipping agency, slipping and sliding in the mud as I stopped to ask directions. One man offered to take me there himself—it was only a few blocks away—if I would go with him to his room for five minutes. I didn't imagine he had a quick hand of gin in mind, but five minutes!

The wagon train for Galena, Illinois was not set to leave until morning. It is one hundred-sixty-five miles from Chicago. One can take a stagecoach, the company providing food and overnight stays at posts along the way, but it costs twelve dollars. A ticket on the wagon train is half as much. I had already spent thirteen dollars, and it would be days if not weeks before I reached Shakopee. As I didn't want to spend money on a room for the night, I asked the agent if I could sleep in one of the unhitched wagons. He looked at me as if it was not the first time he'd been asked such a thing, and to my relief said that as long as no one else knew about it and I had no visitors, it was fine with him, although it would cost me seventy–five cents. I gave him the money, wondering if he had his own night-time visit in mind, and what I would do about that, but he left me alone.

Excerpted from The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore. Copyright © 2023 by Susanna Moore. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.