I read the beginning, skipped ahead and read the last half of the book in one sitting, then went back to the beginning and started over, but didn't finish the first half. I'm tabling it for now because my book club will be reading it later in the year. Great book!

***

Favorite quotes:

"It's worth it, you know." (Jennie)

"What is Jennie?" (John)

"The pain. It's worth it. The more you love, the more it hurts. But it's worth it. It's the only thing that is." (p. 26).

***

“Anger feels a whole lot better than fear,” Ma concedes.

I nod, and she squeezes my arm again.

“But anger is useless,” she insists. “Useless and futile.”

“I don’t know about that.” It isn’t useless if it keeps the fear away.

“Are you angry with the bird because he can fly, or angry with the horse for her beauty, or angry with the bear because he has fearsome teeth and claws? Because he’s bigger than you are? Stronger too? Destroying all the things you hate won’t change any of that. You still won’t be a bear or a bird or a horse. Hating men won’t make you a man. Hating your womb or your breasts or your own weakness won’t make those things go away. You’ll still be a woman. Hating never fixed anything. It seems simple, but most things are. We just complicate them. We spend our lives complicating what we would do better to accept. Because in acceptance, we put our energies into transcendence.”

“Transcendence?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll have to explain that one to me, Ma. I don’t know what transcendence means.”

“That’s where your mind goes when your hands are drawing,” Ma explains. “It’s a world, a place, beyond this one. It’s what could be.”

I nod. That much I understand. When I draw, it does feel like I go somewhere else. I escape. It’s the reason I’ll never stop, even when it seems like a waste of precious time.

“Put your energy into rising above the things you can’t change, Naomi. Keep your mind right. And everything will work out for the best.”

“Even if there’s a lot of pain along the way?”

“Especially if there’s pain along the way,” Mama says firmly. (conversation between Naomi and Winifred, p. 42-43).

***

"The hardest thing about life is knowing what matters and what doesn't," Winifred muses. "If nothing matters, then there's no point. If everything matters, there's no purpose. The trick is to find firm ground between the two ways of being."

"I haven't figured out the point or the purpose." (John)

"Just trying to survive makes things pretty clear most days. We have to eat; we need shelter; we have to keep warm. Those things matter."

I nod. Simple enough.

"But none of those things matter at all if you have no one to feed, to shelter, or to keep warm. If you have no one to survive for, why eat? Why sleep? Why care at all? So I guess it's not WHAT matters but. . . WHO matters." (p. 169).

***

"That's what marriage is. It's shelter. It's sustenance. It's warmth. It's finding rest in each other. It's telling someone, YOU MATTER MOST." (Winifred, p. 170).

***

"There's good and bad in all kinds of people. Indians and emigrants alike. . . . So you have to be real careful about who you hate." (John, p. 239).

***

"Are you angry with the bird because he can fly, or angry with the horse for her beauty, or angry with the bear because he has fearsome teeth and claws? Because he's bigger than you are? Stronger too? Destroying all the things you hate won't change any of that. You still won't be a bear or a bird or a horse. Hating men won't make you a man. Hating your womb or your breasts or your own weakness won't make those things go away. Hating never fixed anything.

It's like Ma is right here, reciting all her simple wisdom in my head, and I tell Washakie what she told me.

"Ma said transcendence is when we rise above the things we can't change," I add.

"How do we know what we can't change?" Washakie asks John, and John asks me.

I shake my head. I don't know the answer to that.

"We can't change what is. Or what was," John says slowly. "Only what could be."

Transcendence is a world, a place, beyond this one. It's what could be." (Naomi's thoughts, p. 321)

***

"Their grief is a comfort. It's like Jennie said. It isn't love unless it hurts and their pain tells me Wolfe was cherished, he was loved, and he is mourned, and at the end if life, no matter how short, that is all there is." (John Lowry's thoughts, p. 328).

***

"For me Lost Woman captures the spirit of this book, the struggles of all women, all mothers, in the landscape of 1850s America." (Author's note, p. 338).

"As with any work of historical fiction, fact and imagination must be woven together because so many of the facts are in dispute or simply don't tell the whole story. One thing that is not in dispute: life was hard for the emigrants who crossed the plains. I read countless pioneer journals and compilations. The people suffered, they had very little, and most of them just wanted a better life and went west to find it. There was good and bad, ugly and beautiful, shameful and hopeful, and it's all wrapped into one very rich heritage. In order to accurately reflect the times, I had to use terms and words and talk about things that I am not comfortable with and you might not be comfortable with either. I hope the reader will experience the story in the spirit it was written, recognizing that who we are is not who they were, and judging historical people by today's standards prevents us from learning from them, from their mistakes and their triumphs. These people helped build the framework that we now stand on. We should be careful about burning it down." (Author's note, p. 339).

Where the Lost Wander - Likewise Book Reviews

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