Reviewed By Viga Boland for Readers’ Favorite
Until I read Days of Hope, Miles of Misery: Love and Loss on the Oregon Trail by Fred Dickey, my familiarity with wagon trains and early American pioneers was limited to Hollywood movies full of cowboys, Indians, horses, cows, bonneted ladies, scruffy undernourished children, dusty dangerous trails and death. The visuals were great, but Fred Dickey’s account is just so much more realistic, memorable, and emotionally moving. While centered on the growing romantic relationship between the male and female protagonists, Nimrod Lee and Hannah Blanc, Dickey’s wagon train journey to California gives equal importance to many minor characters and situations, both good and bad. This historical novel, in many ways, is a cluster of vignettes. We engage emotionally with a child chasing a ball into quicksand or frozen with fear in front of a rattlesnake. We bristle at episodes of domestic violence and rage at a stepfather who sexually abuses his step-daughter. We sympathize with families who regret the decision to search for greener grasses; and we feel their fear when a group of arrow-toting, face-painted Indians confront the wagon train.
This is no longer the glorified stuff of Hollywood films. Thanks to Dickey’s extensive research and his creative ability to make the settings, plot, and characters come alive, this is life as it really was. Yes, there is a hero, Nimrod, a man plagued by guilt. He is on a mission, but as the wagon train’s guide, he brings order to chaos, sense to nonsense, and kills only those who deserve it in order to save others. And what would a story about such a hero be without an equally impressive, strong female? That female is Hannah, a woman not content to just be some man’s wife. She’s is the pioneer version of a liberated woman, one who studied to be a doctor at a time when men weren’t receptive to female practitioners. These two protagonists are perfect for each other and readers relish the time they take discovering that fact.
Days of Hope, Miles of Misery: Love and Loss on the Oregon Trail is rich in descriptive detail, especially of the settings, the clothing worn, the sanitary or unsanitary conditions, the pastimes enjoyed by the members of the wagon train and so much more. Dialogue is plentiful, and given the length of the book, helps speed up the reading pace, but without sacrificing the realism of likely dialects and colloquialisms. Thus, not only descriptive settings but conversations contribute to the realities this novel explores. There are so many things one could say about this excellent historical novel but, truly, the only thing left to say is read it. Find out for yourself about Days of Hope, Miles of Misery: Love and Loss on the Oregon Trail and come away feeling like you, too, were one of the pioneers on that wagon train along the Oregon Trail.
