Sisters of Fortune : Being the True Story of How Three Motherless Sisters Saved Their Home in New England and Raised Their Younger Brother While Their Father Went Fortune Hunting in the California Gold Rush

Stecker, Ann Page, Heffernan, Nancy Coffey

ISBN 10: 087451651X / ISBN 13: 9780874516517

Published by Dartmouth College, 1993

Former library copy. Pages intact with possible writing/highlighting. Binding strong with minor wear. Dust jackets/supplements may not be included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 39658331-6

Synopsis:

In 1850 , James Wilson, a widowed congressman from Keene, New Hampshire, left his three daughters and young son to seek his fortune in the California gold rush. During his twelve year absence, the daughters wrote their father almost 350 letters filled with accounts of daily life and lively observations on local and national events. The daughters -- Mary Elizabeth, 24, Annie, 18, and Charlotte, 16, when their father left -- were conventional, upper-middle-class young women struggling to keep up appearances in a society that accorded them few rights. These letters and the story they tell constitute a valuable social and cultural document and offer readers a vivid description of mid-19th century American life.

Review: "What Nancy Coffey Heffernan and Ann Page Stecker have done in Sisters of Fortune is to edit these letters into a remarkable documentary history of the Wilson daughters . . . the girls paid the bills, harvested the crops. They grew up, because women, and then wives, and then mothers. They steered young Jamie into Harvard. They did survive, as a family and as individuals; and Sisters of Fortune is an extraordinary account of this survival." --New York Times Book Review

Bibliographic Details

Title: Sisters of Fortune : Being the True Story of...
Publisher: Dartmouth College
Publication Date: 1993
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good