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A novel
by Susanna Moore
Book Reviewed by:From one of our most compelling and sensual writers comes a searing, immersive novel about a seminal and shameful moment in America's conquest of the West. Drawing partly from a true story, it brings to life a devastating Native American revolt and the woman caught in the middle of the conflict.
In the summer of 1855, Sarah Brinton abandons her husband and child to make the long and difficult journey from Rhode Island to Minnesota Territory, where she plans to reunite with a childhood friend. When she arrives at a small frontier post on the edge of the prairie without family or friends and with no prospect of work or money, she quickly remarries and has two children. Anticipating unease and hardship at the Indian Agency, where her husband Dr. John Brinton is the new resident physician, Sarah instead finds acceptance and kinship among the Sioux women at a nearby reservation.
The Sioux tribes, however, are wary of the white settlers and resent the rampant theft of their land. Promised payments by the federal government are never made, and starvation and disease soon begin to decimate their community. Tragically and inevitably, this leads to the Sioux Uprising of 1862. During the conflict, Sarah and her children are abducted by the Sioux, who protect her, but because she sympathizes with her captors, Sarah becomes an outcast to the white settlers. In the end, she is lost to both worlds.
Intimate and raw, The Lost Wife is a brilliantly subversive tale of the conquest of the American West.
Despite the book's small page count, Moore conveys ample information about settler mores in the mid-19th century. She also testifies to timeless phenomena: addiction, mental health issues and the cycles of misogynistic and racial violence. At heart, this is a story about survival, and about a mother desperately trying to protect her children and reconnect with the daughter she had to leave behind. The flat storytelling, which may represent a pastiche of period style, could limit reader engagement. Still, it is a vivid account of a lesser-known aspect of the country's war history, putting Indigenous people's suffering at the center. It is also a valuable critique of the American West, and what one character calls its "myth of innocence and abundance."..continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Much of Susanna Moore's The Lost Wife is set during the five-week conflict in Minnesota that came to be known as the U.S.-Dakota War. According to the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, "The conflict can be viewed as one of the genocidal efforts to forcibly remove the Dakota from Minnesota."
Starting in 1805, the Dakota signed a series of treaties with the U.S. government, ceding land in exchange for food and money. Minnesota was admitted to the Union in 1858, making it the 32nd state. U.S. government policy had incentivized migration to the West, culminating with the Homestead Act, which was signed into law in May 1862 and offered 160 acres to settlers who paid a small filing fee and were committed to ...
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