Walking West

by Noelle Sickels

Book Overview

In the wet spring of 1852, a small band of Indiana farm families sets off for California, lured west by the promise of a better life. Men, women, and children, the Muller party crosses treacherous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312132085
• ISBN13: 9780312132088
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Book Review "Walking West"

"Walking West" by Noelle Sickels is an historical novel. The author does a thorough research of the period, and uses information gleaned from diaries, letters, and journals to lead you into a journey narrated mostly by Alice Muller, member of a small band of Indiana farmers and their families who set off for California in 1852 lured by the promise of a better life and prosperity. From the crossing of the grand Missouri River at Council Bluffs, Iowa, you are invited to experience along with the different characters in the party, their thoughts, fears, doubts, angers, resentments and secrets. You'll discover right away that the women who walked along beside the men, drove oxen, sang, prayed, toiled, gave birth, and died, had inner strengths buried deep within their souls, that they didn't even know they had. Alice Muller's journal is shared with the reader and reveals that in the beginning, she would rather have stayed on their farm in Indiana. Being a dutiful wife, she reluctantly agreed to head West. She later discovers that her commitment to the trek West is stronger than her attachment to her former life. Toward the end of their journey, Alice loses her beloved husband, Henry, to illness and she is compelled to lead the party over the last miles of the journey. I was so impressed with the character of Alice. She walked beside her husband and other members of the party all the way to California. She never rode in the wagon except after a miscarriage and to nurse the infant of a sister-in-law. I have always loved stories about the trek West by people who could have been my grandparents. I always felt like I was born one hundred years too late. I really loved this novel.

Quiet, poetic, heroic

As Americans we have the Pioneer Story in our bones. We've heard it endlessly all out lives. Yet, this is a story that defines us as a people, and I for one can never get enough of it. Each time I read a story of the crossing of the plains, desert, mountains I learn something new and am inspired again by my ancestors. Sickles writes with great beauty and emotion, a simple story with complex feelings and outcomes. The pioneers' triumphs and tragedies are our own, and we cheer them along and cry for them in turn. This is a magnificent book - read it!

Unforgettable...

Wow...There is a beauty and precision in this langauge that is so rare. This book is brimming with unforgettable characters and settings and scenes that will take you on an emotional ride. The way Sickels is able to bring each and every one of her characters to life is so refreshing. She is able to involve her readers by getting us attached to even the most minor of characters. This book is full of family, love, joy, hardship, pain, and loss -- all come full circle with a strong basis of impressibly well-researched history and well-developed settings. This is a book about strong women and strong wills. This is a book that will break your heart but also warm it. Noelle Sickels is an amazing writer with not only an obvious passion for the beauty of the written word, but also a way of carefully weaving an intricate and well-developed story that stays with us always.

beautiful and inspirational

I found this to be one of the most intriguing and inspirational books that I have recently read. The characters are vivid as are the hardships that they endure. I could not put this book down. The sad moments are unbelievably touching and the happy moments brought tears of joy to my eyes.

fine writing, real, intelligent, and interesting characters

It is truly hard to isolate one passage in this book that stands out more than the rest, for there is so much fine writing here. This is a history one can believe in; no outbursts of incomprehensible violence nor impulisve torrid love affairs just for the sake of titillation. This is a book for connoisseurs of language, syntax and history. What's more, this is a book for women ravenous for self-images. Alice is full-bodied, courageous, intelligent, and amazingly, in love with a husband who does what no other literary figure has ever done: he takes the time to make love to his wife; to do what pleases her. How odd!There is an amazing cast of characters and Sickels rescues them all from banality or ridicule. But this is not a book about character alone; this is a book about place, as well. The West is truly the frontier land, and still is, and this book captures that feel of endless space, and loneliness, and beauty.Savor this book; roll it around in your mind like a fine wine. Take the time.