Eleanor Gates
The Biography of a Prairie Girl
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
- ISBN
- 1511679867 / 9781511679862
- Pages
- 254
- Weight
- 15.8 oz.
- Dimensions
- 6.0 x 0.6 in.
Enjoy reading The Biography of a Prairie Girl? You may also like these books
-
Eleanor Gates
Eleanor Gates’s Collected Works: The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Biography of a Prairie Girl, and More!
language (Jame-Books Sept. 26, 2014) -
Eleanor Gates
Apron-strings: ...a Story for all Mothers who Have Daughters and for all Daughters who Have Mothers
Hardcover (Palala Press Dec. 4, 2015)
