Eleanor Gates
Published: 2015-04-11
Total Pages: 254
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A masterpiece of frontier fiction; an autobiographical novel of growing up on a lonely prairie farm in 1880's South Dakota. "California has a good claim upon Eleanor Gates, author of 'The Biography of a Prairie Girl," and should be proud to put forth its claim since the book is an altogether notable contribution to the literature of the west. 'The Biography of a Prairie Girl" is aptly named. It tells of the life of a girl born and bred on a Dakota farm, and it tells it in a simple, unadorned way that makes it interesting. It is a book without a plot, without even the always-expected love story. It is just a series of pictures, showing the development of a guileless life in a part of the world new to civilization, and yet it has a charm that is indescribable. One follows, with absorbing interest, the trivial incidents that fill the days of the little prairie girl. One feels a keen delight over her triumph at the Christmas entertainment, listens intently to the story of her pet cowbird, of her tame badger, of her first day at school, and stands, fear-filled, with the anxious mother and brothers when death hovers over the little girl's cot. "The book is refreshingly free from the thread-bare tricks that so many authors rely upon for success. There is none of the strife to be original or smart and the temptation to be melodramatic has been resisted, although there are abundant opportunities for this in the prairie fire, the death in the blizzard, an Indian foray, a cattle stampede. The experiences are given in plain fashion and it is this simplicity and sincerity that gives the book its effectiveness. "To readers the world over the book must appeal, but it should have a particular interest to Californians for, as has been said, California has a claim upon the book, since California did much to make the writing of it possible." Leavenworth Macnar, "Sunset," "A Magazine of the Border," Vol. X, No. 1, November, 1902. CONTENTS I The Coming of the Stork II A Frontier Christening III "Little Boy Blue" IV A Pariah of the Prairies V The Misfit Scholar VI The Story of a Planting VII Twice in Jeopardy VIII A Harvest Wedding IX The Price of Convalescence X "Badgy" XI A Trade and a Trick XII The Professor's "Find" XIII A Race and a Rescue XIV Hard Times XV The Fate of a Crowing Hen XVI The Reservation Trip XVII Another Mound on the Bluff XVIII The Little Teacher XIX Toward the Rising Sun