Impatient with Desire

admin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Impatient with Desire is the story of Tamsen Donner, now-legendary westward pioneer. Tamsen was forty-five when she set out on the California-Oregon Trail with her husband and five children in the spring of 1846. Stranded by early snows, Tamsen and the other Donner Party pioneers spent a harrowing four months in the Sierra Nevadas without supplies. Tamsen sent her daughters out with relief parties and stayed behind with her wounded husband; she died sometime in April 1847, leaving only her letters and a journal that was never recovered. Impatient with Desire is a recreation of that lost journal.

Burton’s meticulously researched account mingles her own prose with phrases from Tamsen’s extant letters, with engaging results. From her shelter in the Sierra Nevadas, Tamsen remembers her girlhood in Newburyport, her courtship and marriage with her second husband, the bustle of their preparations to move west, and the hardships of trail life. Burton captures the voice of this remarkable woman, a schoolteacher and botanist who traveled alone from Massachusetts to Illinois and left behind a spirited collection of letters to her sister Betsey. “In my lifetime people have sometimes wondered at my conduct, but they have never despised me,” Tamsen writes, thinking back over her travels. “And I shall never be despised.”

Tamsen’s independence does not go too far, however, in securing her voice on the trail. One of the most harrowing moments in Impatient with Desire is a campfire scene where the party’s men debate over whether or not to take the Hastings Cutoff, the ill-advised shortcut that ultimately left them stranded. Sitting beyond the circle of men with her journal on her lap, Tamsen records the fateful vote, convinced that no woman in the party would have agreed to the decision. Months later, searching for empty spaces in her filled journal, Tamsen muses, “You can write a whole book in the margins.” Tamsen’s marginalized pages remind us of marginalized voices: a “schoolteacher doing life and death sums,” Tamsen is at once a mother, wife, traveler, scribe, voteless companion.

Despite her exclusion from trail politics, Tamsen still maintains an equal companionship with her second husband George. The story of their marriage blends the objects and scenes of memory with the bleak mountain campsite. These vivid recollections—holidays and children’s birthdays, the decision to move West, the frenzy of preparations, and the excitement as the party sets out from Independence—bring Tamsen alive as a historical figure. Reminiscence finally yields to grim inventory as, in spare, elegant language, Tamsen records taking apart her family’s shelter, her botany collection, even her journal cover, for sustenance.

Burton’s Impatient with Desire is more evenly composed than her memoir about her cross-country journey in Tamsen’s tracks, Searching for Tamsen Donner. I began the book a bit skeptical about its valorization of the American frontier, and I kept reading because I wanted more Tamsen. Donner Party lore has often focused on the cannibalism of the pioneers (confirmed facts about the Donner Party’s struggles are notoriously scanty). Burton deftly negotiates this tale of outward struggle to bring us a story of inner survival as well. I read Impatient with Desire with a kind of grim fascination; Tamsen’s endurance and the powerful elegance of her narration stayed with me long after I finished the book.

Finely crafted and spellbinding in the calm pain of its heroine, Impatient with Desire is historical fiction at its best. Readers interested in women’s history, westward expansion, wilderness tales, and historical fiction will find much to ponder.

Written by: Barbara Barrow, April 12th 2010

Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You: Kids, Carbs, and the Coming Hormonal Apocalypse

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Anita Renfroe

Voice

Sassy southern belle Anita Renfroe’s sharp and charming wit weaves together a series of essays on everything from body image, motherhood, and the holiday season in Don't Say I Didn't Warn You. The book is the kind of happy, light read you just cannot put down.

Without bombarding you with a barrage of jokes like so many other books by comedians, Renfroe shares the lighter side of her world, and you laugh alongside her. She makes up her own pseudo-psychological terms: “Compulsive Counsel Disorder,” a mother’s inability to hold back from doling out advice; “RAD: Remodeling Affective Disorder,” what invigorates type-A people to complete all the projects they have been meaning to do all year.; and the “Tiny Tote-r,” a woman who a woman who can pack a mountain into a mole hill. The made-up terminology brings an unexpected layer of depth and humor to many of the vignettes.

The range of her new dictionary definitions give a glimpse of the topics covered throughout the book but only scratch the surface. The first third of the book focuses on the experience of motherhood particularly her own most poignant yet humorous moments as a mom. The second is a mish-mash of stories of her family and her thoughts on body image and the modern American woman. The last third is all about the holidays, trials and triumphs.

As Renfroe jumps from topic to topic, her voice strings the scatter of essays together and demonstrates her comedic vision. As much as I loved the variety, the essays felt somewhat disjointed, as if she took the strongest jokes from her acts and extended each one into an essay. There is a flow from piece to piece, but just barely; Renfroe relies on your following the stream of laughs instead of providing a clearly defined path from Point A to Point B.

This aside, with its appeal to motherly instincts and emphasis on the silliness of family and the holidays, I have found my mom’s Christmas present, though I will be sure to make clear this is not a plea for my mother to succumb to another bout of Compulsive Counsel Disorder.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, December 9th 2009