A Lantern in Her Hand (Puffin Classics)

This book begins in a small Nebraska town. An elderly lady, Mrs. Abbie Deal, is found dead in her home. She is independent, refuses to live with any of her five kids. She and her dead husband planned and built this house, she loves this house. Mrs Deal is a pioneer lady who has seen much happening in the eighty years she was on this earth.Her story begins when she is eight years old. Her widowed mother decides to more her family, six kids, from Chicago to Iowa in two covered wagons containing all the family possessions. She wants to join her newly married daughter, keep the family together.Abbie Mackenzie is a very imaginative child. She sings at her outdoor chores and dreams she is a beautifully dressed, bejeweled lady singing at venues all over the world. She does have a beautiful voice. She also wants to be an artist, painting all the beauty of the natural world. Then she grows up. Her best friend growing up is Will Deal who goes off to fight in the Civil War. Abbie realizes how she loves and misses him. This is a sweet story of married love which lasts for as long as the couple are on earth. Will wants to move to Nebraska to get his own land. The two and their young son travel in a covered wagon. Will builds a sod house, begins to break the land. The couple works hard as pioneer families must do to exist. This author brings the reader into the lives of pioneers, their hardships, their families, their neighbors. There is WORK, WORK, MORE WORK. The land, the weather and nature fight against those who want to dominate, the pioneers fight back. Abbie is a natural and loving mother. Five more babies are born. And how she loves being a mom and a wife. The small town grows bigger and bigger. The children, growing up, want advantages. Abbie gives up her dreams to give her children theirs. Will isn't happy about this. He loves her and feels she should do more for herself. But Abbie is delighted in her new home, large, roomy, and getting away from the sod house. She enjoys working on her home and making this house the way she wants it.Time goes on, faster and faster. However harsh as the prairie is to the pioneers, the land shares its beauty with whoever chooses to live there. Then more tragedy. Will Deal dies leaving Abbie alone, at times she feels he is still with her,so strong is their love. She somewhat talks to him, consults him. Tells noone, people will think she is crazy.Time rushes on. The children move off, go on with their lives. Noone wants to farm. Then they marry, making Abbie a grandmother, then a great grandmother. She never gets over the feeling that Will is close and a confident. Time passes, things change. Abbie loves the prairie, loves Nebraska, is never sorry she chose this life. Her daughters and daughters-in-law are so much different than their mother and mother-in-law. She is such a good person, others push more and more work and responsibilities on her. There is Abbie's favorite grandchild, Laura, who is so much like her grandmother. I disliked the character of prissy, old maid Grace. I am from the northeast where so many of the people there are from immigrant families.A beautiful story of a life well lived.One book, One Nebraska chose this book for 2009. I enjoy reading midwestern writers. These authors write so well. I read this book many years ago and decided I needed to read it again.

Fairly well written, with only a couple of areas that seemed to drag along. The subject matter kept me interested throughout.

Aldrich captures all of our stories. The pain and successes of life. The joys and disappointments of parenting. The transitions and how they impact us. Excellent read.

I first read this book more than 50 years ago. I liked it enough then to remember the title many decades later. Although I had forgotten most of the characters and the details, the story was still as beautifully poignant to me.

This book is incredibly moving. It tells the gritty tale of Abbie Deal, a pioneer woman who moved to the prairies of Nebraska with the man she loved. They spent years living in a dugout, struggling to survive drought, fire, blizzards, personal tragedy, hunger and poverty while raising five children. Better times finally came, but always there was relentless hard work that prevented the talented young woman from realizing her dreams of singing, playing for great audiences and writing. And yet, through a long lifetime of unremitting labor and sacrifice, all of Abbie's dreams for herself are realized through her children and grandchildren. The author creates her character in such a way that the reader shares deeply in her hopes and fears, understands her longings and experiences her extraordinary emotional life, though it is lived quietly, rippling beneath the surface of constant doing for others. This is one of the most beautiful novels that I have ever read. The main character represents the countless pioneer women, unsung, overlooked and ignored by history, who carved for themselves and their families, against overwhelming odds, a life of hope from a harsh world of privation and struggle. We are impelled to look at lives lived at the beginning, in primitive circumstances in prairie hovels, before there were fields of grain, thriving farms, schools, towns or doctors. The author conveys this reality with starkness and great sympathy, allowing the reader to journey into the mind, heart and soul of a woman beset with trials on every side, and yet, in the end, completely triumphant.

This is a wonderful sensitive story about a lovely person named Abbie Deal. The author takes you from Abbie's tender age of 12 to the final years of her life. If you want a glimpse into the past of at least a century or more ago to see the guts, determination and resolve for this plucky woman to help her devoted husband carve a home in the untamed land of Nebraska, this is the book to read. Follow Abbie and her husband, Will, as they leave Illinois by schooner for Nebraska and silently watch as they turn the first spade of earth to begin their lives together to the last spade that is used to turn the earth to bury Abbie. Ms. Aldrich, the author, vividly describes the grit it took for a pioneer couple to battle the elements - sand storms, too much rain-too little rain, grasshoppers swarming and destroying crops, blizzards with drifts of snow as high as the eaves and killing their livestock (a source of income) to raising a family and injecting the sense to achieve in her children and to pass along a foundation of values.This story touched me personally as my own parents homesteaded in eastern Colorado at the beginning of the last century. I also experienced some of the same wretched conditions as Abbie and her husband,Will, that of the dust storms of the 30s, year after year of no rain, as well as the plague of grasshoppers destroying everything in sight. Though this story may be fictional, I will long remember Abbie Deal with empathy for what she endured, because I know there were many people who actually blazed those trails to settle this country with blood, sweat and tears. .

I chose this rating to say old books can be great. I read this book when I was a teenager. I loved it then and still love

Bess Streeter Aldrich is just a fantastic writer. Any of her books that I have read are a delight. Buy them!

An excellent example of pioneer writing. A grittier version of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but every bit as engaging. Recommended read.

I have loved this book since I was a child. Just as enjoyable now as then. Historical fiction

This is a story of pioneer life in 1870s America, told from the point of view of a young family. The author lived at a time close enough to the events to have spoken to people who were there. It's a fascinating historical record as well as a brilliant family saga.

perfect condition on arrival