Cindy Swanson
reading
A Name of Her Own/Every Fixed Star, by Jane Kirkpatrick
One doesn't have to be avidly interested in the early pioneers of the Old West to become emotionally involved in this based-on-real-life story of Marie Dorion. Marie was a contemporary and perhaps even a friend of Sacagawea, the Indian woman who helped guide Lewis and Clark.
As the series begins, Marie, a young Ioway Indian woman, is married to Pierre, a hard-drinking and sometimes abusive mixed-blood man who is an interpreter for the Wilson Hunt Astoria expedition of 1811. Marie refuses to be left behind with her two small sons, Jean Baptiste and Paul. As the expedition makes its westward way through incredible hardships, we come to deeply appreciate and admire Marie's strength and courage along with her tenderness and vulnerability.
While intimately involving us in Marie's life, as well as that of her family and her fellow travelers, Jane Kirkpatrick paints a fair and balanced portrait of the conquering of the western part of our nation. It's a complicated mix of courage, greed, injustice and bravery-and Kirkpatrick's gifted pen brings it to vivid life.
As the second book, Every Fixed Star, begins, Marie and her sons have already faced and survived a tragic ordeal, and Marie is on the brink of finding love again. Marie can't bring herself to trust the joyful times, fearing the bad times that she expects will follow. Still, we see her being drawn inexorably closer to the Provident God that her former mother and mother-in-law told her about in her youth-the God who has given every fixed star a name, and loves each soul individually.
As I read A Name of Her Own and Every Fixed Star, I found myself marveling both at the character and courage of the people who formed the backbone of our country in its early days, and at the talent of the author who has made it so real in these books. I can't wait to read the next book in this remarkable trilogy.
