Sisters of Fortune: Being the True Story of How Three Motherless Sisters Saved Their Home in New England and Raised Their Younger Brother While Thei

Heffernan, Nancy Coffey; Stecker, Ann Page

ISBN 10: 087451651X / ISBN 13: 9780874516517

Published by Univ Pr of New England, 1993

The book is in good condition with all pages and cover intact, including the dust jacket if originally issued. The spine may show light wear. Pages may contain some notes or highlighting, and there might be a "From the library of" label. Boxed set packaging, shrink wrap, or included media like CDs may be missing. Seller Inventory # BSM.UV9K

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: Univ Pr of New England
Publication Date: 1993
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: good