"These is my Words" by Nancy E. Turner. This is a recommendation from my roommate Lauren who just devours books. She said this is her favorite as of late. Summary below."These Is My Words" by Nancy E. Turner is in diary form and spans 20 years.
Sarah Prine is a teenage girl traveling with her family to make a living in Arizona Territory. Indian attacks, disease, death, and other hardships force Sarah to grow up face. When members of her family die and she is forced to take a significant role in careing for her family the strain starts to be overwhelming. One night, she breaks down crying in her wagon to be discovered by the arrogant, commanding, hard, and handsome army Captain that served as their wagon train guide, Captain Jack Elliot. She spends a night in his arms - nothing more than sleeping - and fears that she will be a ruined woman. Jack comforts her.
When her family leaves the wagon train to settle down a friend of the family shows up with a heard of horses, planning to start a horse ranch not far from their peach orchard. Jack, still on army duty, can only come by occasionally and still passionate embraces with Sarah. Too late, does he find Sarah married to Jimmy Reed, the family friend, out of a misguided sense of friendship. A short while later Sarah finds herself a young mother and widow - Jimmy being thrown from his horse and dragged at full gallop. Her husbands dying words were confessing his love for a woman he left behind - he married Sarah as a sort of "back up plan."
Jack appears in Sarah's life again, and his love for her and her daughter is stronger than ever. After courting for a while, they marry. The rest of Sarah's diary is her life with Jack and their trials. Growing into middle years, troubles with a sister in law, and the difficulties of raising children in an army fort.
NOTE: As it is in diary form there are many spelling and grammar errors, therefore, it takes a little bit to get used to the format. Probably the thing that throws people off the most is that there are no quatation marks. As assinine as this may sound, after a short time of getting into the book (a very easy and delightful read) one forgets those things. "
Happy reading!
5 comments:
Oh good! I've wanted to read this. I say "These is my words" all the time, but I don't really know anything about the book. Hopefully I will make time to finish reading it.
I've read it and really enjoyed it. You guys will laugh because it's typical me. I was bored at the beginning (she's not a very fluent writer) but then she meets a guy and all of a sudden I couldn't get enough of the book. So the romance hooked me, but I really grew to appreciate the narrator. Through her experiences and her writing style, you can see how much she grows and changes. It wasn't until the end that I realized the author had been gradually making her writing more and more fluent and descriptive. Genius!
I'm excited. I've never even heard of this book actually, so apparently I'm way behind. Camille, I'm just wondering who you say "These is my words" to? Just curious how that fits into conversation...maybe I should try it with my students!
I say it to Micah and Nigel and Bradley a lot I guess in the same way you would say, "I meant what I said." FOr example to Micah, "Do you still feel like eating buttermilk pancakes? Because I do too." Micah to me, "Really you do?" Me to Micah, "These is my words."
This is one of my all time favorite books. Love it! I might just re-read it, if I can finish the book for March...
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