So Far From Home: An Army Bride on the Western Frontier, 1865–1869 by Julia Gilliss (review)

208 WesternAmerican Literature silence, broken only by the revision of Anywhere but Here, his much-lauded collaboration with Arna Bontemps on the history of black migration in America. He spent the remainder ofhis life as an encyclopedia editor, retiring to Moberly, Missouri, where his life began, in the MonkeyNest coal camp. AsConroysawit, his mission aswriter and editorwas to document the lives ofworking classpeople and toprovide aforum forworking classwriters.Atodds throughout hiscareerwith Partyhard-linerswho equated literaturewith propa­ ganda, he lost his last editorship in a struggle with board members who hoped to increase circulation bypublishing establishedwritersrather than newcomers. McCarthyism effectivelyended radicalwriting, and the rise ofuniversityliterary magazines took over the new-writerforum. While some radicals moved success­ fully into the bourgeois mainstream, Wixon argues that Conroy’s silence re­ sulted from an unwillingness or inability to compromise his beliefs about worker-writing, long after the market for such writing had disappeared. Although tantalizing details about Conroy’s personal life do surface (he and Nelson Algren once established an “escape fund”for an imprisoned bur­ glar, for instance), Wixon’svery readable account is not a biography. Rather, Wixon uses Conroy’s career as a focal point in documenting midwestern literary radicalism. In placing Conroy’scareer in this context, Wixon incorpo­ rates (for the most part unobtrusively) social, political, historical, and cultural references as wide-ranging as Simone Weil and Frederick Jackson Turner. Extensive documentation turns the book into a virtual reference work on literary radicalism. In addition to exhaustive notes and indexing, the book includes a section ofbiographical notes on writers mentioned in the text, a list oflittle magazines and newspaperswhichpublished thesewritersin the ’20sand ’30s, and a thirty-five-page bibliography, which should be the starting point for future research. It’s to be hoped that Worker-Writerin America also provides the boost to Conroy’sreputation needed to merit a full-scale biography. GORDONJOHNSTON Missouri Valley College SoFarFromHome:AnArmyBrideon theWesternFrontier, 1865-1869. ByJulia Gilliss. Edited byPriscillaKnuth. (Portland: Oregon HistoricalSocietyPress, 1993. 231 pages, $14.95.) Julia Gilliss’sletters,written from asuccession ofArmypostsin Oregon, are worth seeking out byreaders interested in familylife shortlyafter the CivilWar. While her letters lack the narrative drive orwell-developed story line ofNannie T. Alderson’sA Bride Goes West, the book provides the many other pleasures of articulate and humorous anecdotes offamily life on the frontier. The reader’s Reviews 209 reward ofbefriending thiswonderful young woman ofcharacter should not be missed. In 1865, Julia Stellwagen married Captain James Gilliss, an Army supply officer. Three weeks after their marriage, both boarded a ship in Baltimore destined for the Pacific Northwest via the Panama Canal, San Francisco, Port­ land, and finally arrived at their first post—Fort Dalles on the Snake River in Washington territory. What did women on the frontier at remote Army posts do to occupy their time? What were their living and travel conditions like?Julia Gilliss’s descrip­ tions to her relatives of her own history and of local events answer those questions and many others. Having mountain howitzers in the parlor and copingwith the terror ofearthquakeswere not unusual. Even on the frontier in 1866, the perennial complaint of “Too much crime!”was heard. Besides commenting criticallyon herself, she had no qualms about discuss­ ing religion, God or even her own death in childbirth in her letters. “Now I think this is a pretty good world on the whole and the more you rub against people and rub offthe coating ofconventionalism the more real gems you find beneath.”Areader cannot help but be enriched byencountering Mrs. Gilliss’s optimism and enthusiasm for life. Her most memorable letters contain opin­ ions in favor ofthe Indians. “I think the Indian depredations are ajust retribu­ tion on their persecutors.” The book isauthentic, unvarnished historywithout the baggage ofmessage or rhetoric attached, and it honestly reflects a feminism of the most important kind. Her letterswill be read with enjoyment for a long time to come. MICHAEL L. POWELL Alexandria, Virginia Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom. By Marilou Awiakta. (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993. 352 pages, $19.95.) The product ofCherokee and Scotch-Irish Appalachian heritage, Tennes­ see writer Marilou Awiakta grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the shadow of the atomic...