Frontier Fiddler: The Life of a Northern Arizona Pioneer

by Kenner Casteel Kartchner, Larry V. Shumway (Editor)

A pioneer rakes brush, saws wood, drills wells, ploughs fields. His role in this world resembles that of a biblical prophet, who lays a highway in the desert, makes the crooked straight and the rough places smooth. Or, to put it in other terms, a pioneer edits the wilderness. Such a person was Kenner Kartchner, a third-generation pioneer of the American Southwest who left some quite literate memoirs. These have been lovingly preserved and edited by his grandson, Larry Shumway, in the book Frontier Fiddler. That Kartchner was a pioneer/writer and Shumway the grandson/editor are facts that determine the strength and the weakness of this book. The strength comes in the direct, image-filled prose that pioneer life seems to have bequeathed Kartchner and that descendant Shumway refuses (wisely) to obstruct. The weakness is that the pioneer work ethic often leads Kartchner to eschew self-reflection and intimacy in his prose in favor of a rather detailed employment history. This penchant sometimes results in a mass of work-related anecdotes that Shumway appears reluctant to trim where other, nonfamilial, editors might (wisely) have been more ruthless. While Kartchner revels in recalling tiny details of ranching, mining, and store clerking—his vocational pursuits—he remains tight-lipped on matters of the mind and heart. Courtship, for instance, is entirely overlooked, the only reference to it coming in the following passage, which appears after nearly two hundred pages of blow-by-blow descriptions of his work (including building a room onto the family homestead for himself and his bride): "Culminating a beautiful romance of several years standing, the wedding was set for March 25, 1908" (186).

280 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1990

Reviews

[Emily Frame · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about my great grandpa KC ♡. He was a piece of work and it was cool to learn more about him. And show Hayes that his GG uncle Lafayette was a catcher, too!

But really, they brought so much joy everywhere they went. I have the best memories at my Great Aunt Merle’s watching them all fiddle and stomp and sing. I told myself I’d learn to play once my kids were in school full time, truly can’t wait!