Prairie Winter

by Elsie Kimmell Field, Bernard Case (Illustrator)

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

In Elsie Kimmell Field's 1959 memoir Prairie Winter, young John and Elsie Kimmell's father (and with Elsie obviously being the author) is an Iowa railroad engineer who sometimes lets his children ride with him, and with Prairie Winter at first sounding like it takes place in the late 19th century, although yes, after researching the Pure Food and Drug Act that is mentioned in Prairie Winter, with this being passed in 1906, well, Prairie Winter clearly takes place in the early 20th and not in the late 19th century, and that I (personally speaking) certainly would want a much more precise time frame from Elsie Kimmell Smith although her sense of geographic place for Prairie Winter is in fact pretty strong. And when in Prairie Winter the Kimmells' South Dakota homestead claim comes through and it is decided that Mama and the two children will spend the first winter on the claim without Papa because someone must actually live on the homestead in order to keep the claim alive (and that the father of course still has to work as an engineer), John and Elsie have a new kind of adventure, far surpassing the thrill of riding next to Papa on the train engine, with work, some privation, and a blizzard making their first year in South Dakota a rugged and memorable experience, and with Prairie Winter giving readers information wise a pretty decently detailed picture of Mid West American homesteading (albeit the Kimmells should also not be considered pioneers anymore either, since 1906 is a bit too recent for the Mid West).

But while the general information, while the specific facts presented in Prairie Winter are in my opinion decently realistic, sorry, but how Kimmell Smith presents her memoir is textually frustrating, is majorly annoying and as such also not really in any manner a reading pleasure (in particular for my inner child who has found pretty much no textual joy at all with and throughout Prairie Winter). For one and first and foremost, Elsie Kimmell Smith's writing style for Prairie Winter is choppily unpoetic and the presented dialogues do not mesh and combine all that smoothly, all that well with the landscape, railroad and town descriptions (and not to mention that the featured Native Americans of Prairie Winter feel creepily artificial, feel like super-imposed non playing characters, feel like statues and that Mr. Schultz with her obviously deliberately rendered broken English with an in my opinion deliberately mocked by Kimmell Smith hugely exaggerated German accent makes me as a German immigrant to Canada totally, utterly cringe). And for two, I also think that the book title of Prairie Winter is rather misleading, since of the 160 pages in Prairie Winter only about forty or so actually deal with winter (and that I sure am annoyed that the book title kind of lies, as I wanted to read Prairie Winter because I was assuming and expecting the majority of Elsie Kimmell Smith's text to be primarily about winter and not in fact only seven of the twenty-five chapters). And thus, only a two star rating for Prairie Winter for me, and not a book I would personally consider recommending, as the interesting homesteading (and early 20th century American history) facts and details Kimmell Smith provides in Prairie Winter are just not even remotely sufficiently mitigated by her in my opinion annoying and frustrating writing style and misleading book title.