Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Letters from Yellowstone by DIane Smith



This is another book that I have to say was slow going for me but over-all I enjoyed it.

This is a book about a team of men, and one women, who meet in Yellowstone and plan to spend the summer camped out and researching the area. A.E. Bartram is a women who loves botany and wants nothing more than to study the plants in the wild of Yellowstone. When she arrives at camp everyone is surprised, they were expecting a man. haha!

She gets off to a slow start with everyone but by the end of the novel they have all become family. This book is told in a series of letters - seeing as how it is 1898 and that was the most common form of communication. You follow her and Professor Merrium as they write to friends and family and describe the plants they have found, the people they have met, and things that have happened at camp.

As mentioned, this was a slow read for me. I found it very interesting, I think it just wasn't the type that I normally read and I had to get in the right mood (I've also been kinda blah - so that didn't help). I really liked the interaction between Alex and Merrium. It was fun to read their letters because neither one thought the other liked them, yet would talk about how much they liked the other person and respected them. I liked how the author touched on the topics of feminism, native americans, conservation and many others.

fiction/new author/226 pages

2 comments:

Jim Macdonald said...

Thanks for sharing this. I've studied a lot of Yellowstone history. So, I was curious about this book, though it's fictional.

I'm not sure it sounds interesting enough for me to read, though. I know you say "not enough books," but when it comes to subjects like this, it can feel like there are too many to pore through.

Thanks again,
Jim

Joy said...

I had questioned this book a couple of months ago. It thought it might be like you describe...slow going. It may be a good one when a change of pace is needed. Thanks for the review.