Amelia Halgren > Recent Status Updates

“Marriage could hardly be like the passionate romances one read about in books. It seems to her, in fact, a rotten deal. Men would be solicitous and well behaved when they courted a woman, asking her out to parties and sending her flowers. But once they married, the flowers wilted.”

I got most of the way through this but my loan is about to expire and I’m not sure I’m invested enough in the characters (because being based on historical events we know how the story ends) to place another hold or renew it. It’s a solid book and I feel I’ve gotten what I wanted out of it.

Instead of accepting Sitting Bull’s apology graciously and listening to what he had to say, the commissioners immediately launched an attack…. Senator John Logan scolded him… “You are not a great chief of this country…. You have no right to any control… you are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government… and all you have and all you are today is because of the government.”

“Crook was convinced that the reservation Apaches had… displayed remarkable forbearance in remaining at peace…. that the Indians had been plundered ‘of their rations and the goods purchased by the government’ …He found plenty of evidence that white men were trying to arouse… violent action so that [Apaches] could be driven from the reservation, leaving it open for land grabbing.”

1879 - The District Attorney for the United Staates of America argues that indians are “not persons under the law.” 😞

Chapter 5

Ours is a nation built on broken promises. 😞

“The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.”

Is the triad inspired by Freud’s id, ego and superego?

Expanding sun… metaphor for global warming?

Expanding sun…thinly veiled metaphor for global warming???

I think I’m done. I loved Siddhartha as a teenager but this isn’t grabbing me in the same way. I’m sure I’d get more out if I read it with a class.

I’m struck by by the prescience of this book written in the 1920s, by how little some things change. It feels like a book of its time, or even of the of the 1970s — I understand this was quite popular reading then and I can understand why.

You’ve given us all the reasons this hasn’t happened before… and then it just HAPPENS? Where’s the anticipation for us as readers???

Ooooh… starting to get really good at the end of part two and into the beginning of part three!

This book is just fine but I must admit I’m losing interest. I’ve now read several articles about Eliza Hamilton that have assuaged my curiosity and made me realize just how much of this book is purely conjecture and fiction. Decent writing but no longer what I’m in the mood for.

Eh… I get so frustrated by people going into the woods unprepared that I’m just finding this an unpleasant story. Based on the description I was hoping for a story of experienced, knowledgeable, outdoorsy ladies who just got into a bad situation. It happens. But to get yourself lost because you went to find a backwoods location without map, compass, or any precise knowledge of how to get there….? 🙄

I’m bailing on this audiobook. It’s fine so far and I like the characters alright but it’s just not grabbing me and it’s making me anxious. Maybe it’s just not quite what I was looking for at the moment m.

Trying to decide if it’s a tangent to talk about the formation of the American ‘creation myth’ in literature or if it’s a pertinent contrast…