The Grains, or Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, with Occasional Pictures of Oregon, Natural and Moral by Margaret Jewett Bailey (review)

90 Western American Literature Billy The Kid: A Handbook. ByJon Tuska. (Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1986. 235 pages, $7.95.) Over 100 years after his death, the life and legend of Billy the Kid con­ tinues to fascinate students of the American West. In this recent examination Jon Tuska takes a detailed and accurate look at the Kid as treated in histories, in fiction and in films. The first chapter, “The Life and Death of the Kid,” is not only an account of his life, but also a concise telling of the Lincoln County War. Considering what little is actually known about the Kid’slife, Tuska has done an admirable job, citing books, interviews and both the Fulton and Mullin papers, with 161 notes at the end of the chapter. Much controversy remains about the Kid’s death at the hand of Pat Garrett. This historical examination starts with Garrett’sversion of the killing. Tuska documents 75 errors in this book, which was actually written by Asa Upson. However, it was used as a source for scores of writers, starting with Charlie Siringo and Walter Noble Burns, whose Saga of Billy The Kid (1926) became a best seller, thus contributing more errors to the legend. Tuska recommends Maurice Garland Fulton, William A. Keleher and Ramon F. Adams as the best historical sources on the Kid. Fictional accounts and film treatments of the Kid tend to follow the same pattern as the histories, with most accounts depending on the Garrett/Upson version of events. A chronology and index enhance the value of this book, which I feel is an excellent treatment of the Kid and the various book and film versions of his life. DAVE TURNER Yellowstone Books The Grains, or Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, with Occasional Pictures of Oregon, Natural and Moral. By Margaret Jewett Bailey; edited by Evelyn Leasher and Robert J. Frank. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1986. 338 pages, $22.95.) Originally published in 1854, The Grains traces formative experiences in the life of Ruth Rover, mainly during the years between 1829 and 1854. Key episodes include: Ruth’s religious conversion at a Methodist camp meet­ ing in New England when she is seventeen; her break with her father and subsequent trip around the Horn to join the Oregon Mission in the Willamette Valley; her eventual disillusionment with the mission and marriage to the physician, Dr. Binney; and, finally, her trials over fifteen years of trying to “endure” her perceived role as an affectionate, dutiful, toiling wife to a hus­ band subject to escalating spasms of violence and meanness, the apparent result of his own progressive alcoholism. Though the story is presented as fiction, the account is barely veiled autobiography. Reviews 91 It is an absorbing personal story, despite a certain literary awkwardness and naivete. Bailey uses an omniscient narrative “frame” as a vehicle to link together segments from letters, diaries, and journals, as well as a scattering of rather conventional occasional poems. The narrative sequence, consequently, is fragmentary and uncertain at times. Modern readers will be annoyed by a stylistic proclivity for passive voice, not to mention a more than occasional narrative tendency to announce events and then decline to describe them. However, the nineteenth-century inclination toward narrative commentary and judgment often provides essential factual and moral perspective on cen­ tral incidents which otherwise would remain entirely ambiguous. What sustains a grip on the reader’s attention, though, is the portrait of a strong and independent young woman who is well ahead of her culture’s time, something of a “beauty,” struggling to subdue her sense of a too avid “carnal nature” with an overpowering commitment to help others, starting with the Oregon Indians and culminating with her own husband. This young woman denies men repeatedly, but they pursue (and betray) her relentlessly. She seeks the missionary life, but discovers it to be hypocritical and corrupt. She endures unforgivable prejudice and injustice from a frontier society domi­ nated by sanctimonious notions of white male supremacy. Yet somehow, despite recurrent defeat, she remains undefeated. In resurrecting this supposedly lost early work, editors Leasher and Frank have made an invaluable contribution to Northwest...