(Not so much a Review as an Homage to pioneering women and this exceptional story).
I love being a bookblogger, it brings wonderful novels into my life that otherwise I’d probably never even come across, let alone read. One such book is the absolutely amazing, The Gates of Eden, a book based on true events and inspired by the Authors own family history. A book I devoured. I lost myself in the pages, the non-existent word “unputdownable” is the only way to describe this awesome book.
What really made this special for me is the ease with which the author creates a credible world which is so easy to slide into and so utterly believable.
I make no secret of the fact that my VERY favourite books are about the everyday lives of pioneering women in the past. I am in awe of women who in times when women were totally oppressed by men, did everything they were able to do to make the best of their lot, often taking on the most utterly daunting tasks, and succeeding. Gates of Eden is the story of one such woman, a girl really, as when our heroine Josephine begins her epic journey she is only fourteen years old, as was the real pioneer who inspired this work, the Authors Great-great grandmother.
This is a story about everyday folk overcoming desperation and hardship. It begins in England, Liverpool to be precise, where young Josephine and her older sister, brothers and Mother have been plunged into sudden dire poverty following the death of her father and the discovery that he was deeply in debt.
From living a comfortable merchant families lifestyle to having to work like slaves in a mill factory, live in a slum apartment and live hand to mouth with little food and no home comforts Josephine’s Mother Elizabeth is desperate to clutch at any passing straw which might offer redemption for her and her family. She wants to do her best but just doesn’t know how. A gentle and genteel woman she has never had to fend for herself before.
Sunday meetings with the newly formed Mormon church, offer a little shelter and companionship, albeit with a much lower class of folk than they are used to associating with Josie and her Mother begin to attend these meeetings, despite scorn from the remainder of the family especially the 2 brothers. Yet when the chance of a new life, in the Americas is offered, Josie and her Mother accept baptism into the Mormon church and set off in a crowded ship for a new life they are promised will take them to a land of milk and honey, of shelter and warmth and food on their plates.
The initial journey by ship is gruelling and as sickness takes hold, deaths begin. Before they have even made it to their new world. Josie and her Mother Elizabeth, do everything they can to fit in with their fellow travellers, despite many of them being ragged and poor, these are folk who once they would have passed without a thought. Some of them become lifelong friends, great secondary characters accompany fabulous main characters in this novel.
Josie begins to teach the younger children and the journey passes slowly until one day they arrive in “the promised land”...
It doesn’t take very long until the realisation that this claim may have been somewhat exaggerated hits home...
When they eventually arrive in America, they find they are despised by some, reviled by many.
They have to hang about waiting for the wooden handcarts for their belongings they are to pull, to be made, by fellow travellers. Food is still scarce, little comfort to be had apart from the dream of making it to Zion, where they are still repeatedly told, there is a land of plenty for all to enjoy.
Watercolour of handcart pioneers just like Josie setting off by William Henry Jackson
Eventually they set off, en-masse and on foot, apart from those who have already found work and decided to stay put.
I can hardly imagine how daunting and difficult a task they faced, to know you have to walk, across a completely foreign and alien landscape, facing wild animals they have never even heard of, weather conditions they haven’t dreamt of and with absolutely no specialist equipment. Coming from poverty the majority of these brave souls are poorly clothed and shod, undernourished and not in the best of health, they have just endured a lengthy and gruelling journey by ship in the harshest of conditions, a journey which itself saw off some of the frailest and less hardy.
Imagine having walked almost 1,000 miles and thinking your journey was almost over, cresting a ridge and seeing ..... this haunting yet daunting view!
I would so NOT have been able to contemplate undertaking a journey like this in these dire circumstances. I’d have still been slaving in the sweatshop until I died. This makes me feel even more privileged to have followed this pilgrimage, which although fiction is based on true fact.
Truth IS stranger than fiction, you would not dream up a journey of 1,300 miles, on foot, through mercilessly remote mountains and bleak desert plains and expect anyone to survive. Yet 3,000 handcart pioneers did survive this awesome trek, although many of them died along the way and to this day their bones remain part of the dust which forms this unforgiving foreign land.
Route of the actual journey
The author IS able to imagine this and she writes about it in a way that makes the reader feel as if they are there. She has researched the journey and even undertaken part of it herself as a personal pilgrimage and to pay homage to her ancestors. She thus paints an amazingly detailed image of the landscapes of rural Oregon.
At this point, I will say little more about the story apart from yet again how absolutely outstanding the book is. To follow Josie across the plains, to learn about the ordeals she faced you MUST read the book. Most harrowing, are the facts around plural marriages and the way women pressed to marry men who already had one or many more wives regarded this practice.
I take my hat off to Nadene’s ancestors, especially the women. Pioneers they certainly were and I am in awe of each journey endured.
I feel privileged to have shared in the memory of these pioneers. If, like me, you are left with a longing to read more factual accounts you could begin by visiting the authors blog, which I have also devoured word for word and from where she has generously shared some of the images contained in my post.
Find the book on Amazon uk or Amazon worldwide
The Author of The gates of Eden
Nadene Lecheminant
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