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For those readers who are following my childhood Alaskan homesteading story that was as integral a part of my childhood as my mother’s mental illness and terrifying capacity for committing crimes of child abuse against her offspring was, I want to recommend the following book written by one of our neighboring homesteaders, Dorothy Pollard Price.

I was able to follow her story of homesteading in the Alaskan Eagle River Valley at the same time our family did from a ‘safe distance’ as I read this book.   I can picture this piece of history because I was very close to it.  Dorothy’s story contains the flavor of the homesteading experience minus our family’s additional experience of abuse, and gave me a small idea of what being in that place and time could have been like for me and my family had my mother (and really my father, also) NOT been so devastatingly mentally ill.

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Eight Stars of Gold: Notes from a Mid-century Alaska Homestead Journal by Dorothy Pollard Price (Paperback – Oct 6, 2008)

Buy new: $14.95 $11.66

12 Used & new from $7.95

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Another book that has been an important part of my traveling  reading material is Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel.  I discovered it in the local thrift store near the town where I live (and can be purchased very cheaply online used).  Combined with my own experience of homesteading and with the experience of homesteading that Dorothy describes, Schlissel’s book allows me to find both similarities and differences in the ‘wilderness experiences’ of women who traveled uncharted territory a hundred or more years ahead of my mother and Dorothy.

In the case of my mother, Schlissel’s book makes me think about the vestiges of Victorianism that remained firmly implanted in my mother’s experience of life because she was so affected by her Bostonian upbringing as it was transmitted to her through the important women in her life — her own mother and her grandmother.

I will be writing more about this in the future!

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