Opal, The Old Trapper & An Adventurous Woman: Warm Reads

I've been staying up too late on these dark winter nights reading and have discovered a few old-fashioned books that have captured my heart. If you are looking for some charming nostalgia, you are going to love these:

Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart by Opal Stanley Whiteley
This is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read. It is the diary of a little girl who was orphaned at the age of five in 1900 and was sent to live in an Oregon logging camp. Her writing is so tender and dear. Her life is hard, and her grammar is her own creation but her words and her perception of the world is exquisite. She tells of being made to spend a day weeding onions by saying that, "My back has hurt feels but the little onions said 'Thank you for giving us more room to grow.'" Gorgeous little book! 


The book is filled with this child's utter wonder and amazement at the natural world. She characterizes people with beautiful descriptive language ("the girl who has no seeing" and "the man with the gray tie who is kind to mice"). In one precious, sweet section Opal becomes very upset because she had been praying to the angels to bring a baby to a recently married couple. However, a neighboring couple have a baby and Opal decides the angels delivered it to the wrong house and she tries to convince the couple with the baby to give it to the other people. Of course they are very amused by this and finally, the man from the first couple, points out to Opal that he and his wife are fair-haired and light-skinned, while the others have black hair and olive-complexions and so does the baby. Opal is not sure she is convinced but decides that at least they "match". 


In some ways it is almost difficult to believe that a child could write this but when you see pictures of the original manuscript (in the edition I had there wee some at the back of the book) it is utterly amazing. They were all printed in big, childish letters on pieces of cardboard and paperbags. The story of how the manuscript was created, destroyed, reconstructed and interpreted is fascinating in itself. 


This is a treasure of a book.

Holiday Tales: Christmas In The Adirondacks by W.H.H. Murray
Written in 1897 this is a wonderful, heart-warming story of an old trapper named John Norton who lives in a cabin in the Adirondacks. There are two stories about the Trapper celebrating Christmas, one in which he brings Christmas to a poor woman and her children abandoned in a cabin in the forest and another in which he decides to make a huge Christmas feast for all the lonely men living alone in his part of the Adirondacks. Colorful, witty and charming. Very nice for this time of year.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
What an absolutely amazing read. In 1909 widowed Elinot Pruitt Stewart took her little daughter west to Wyoming where she filed a land claim and started a ranch. The story is told in a series of letters written home to a woman for whom she worked as a "washer-woman." Her descriptions of the realities of frontier life and the people she encounters are absolutely captivating. In one unforgettable letter she tells of having a "day off" from all her chores so she packs up her daughter and heads off into the mountains, catching fish and shooting squirrels and sage chickens along the way. That night they are surprised by a snowstorm and seek refuge in the cabin of an old mountain man named Zebulon Pike Parker. 


This is just a great, inspiring, astonishing story!


Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and happy reading!


Thanks for reading.