This One Made Me Kinda Sad

My husband and I have an observation we sometimes make about people in history - "People used to be a lot tougher." The book I just finished, The Year We Were Famous by Carole Estby Dagg, is another example. The book tells about a 4,000-mile journey Clara Estby and her mother, Helga, made on foot across the country from near Spokane to New York City on a wager to try to save the family farm in 1896. Sounds kind of unbelievable - except it really happened. Helga was the author's great-grandmother, and Clara was her great-aunt. The book was based on newspaper accounts written during the trip, since the two women's journals were apparently destroyed. They took very little with them, instead depending on the kindness of strangers for food and lodging (and usually getting it). The book tells about several of their adventures along the way, including surviving a flash flood in a canyon, charming a band of Indians with a curling iron (which, oddly, was one thing they took along), and meeting President-elect William McKinley.

I enjoyed the story. Seventeen-year-old Clara is the narrator, and there are the usual "coming of age" issues, as she wonders what she's going to do with her life. The relationship between Clara and her mother is interesting. Based on the way Helga is portrayed, I believe she would be diagnosed today with bipolar disorder - she apparently had periods of severe depression when she couldn't get out of bed, alternating with periods of manic energy (including her decision to undertake this walk). Some of the adventures border on unbelievable, but it's fun to suspend disbelief and go with it. We also see the physical toll walking 25-50 miles per day takes on the women. Clara has to continue walking on a badly sprained ankle for them to have any hope of making their deadline to earn the $10,000 prize the sponsor had offered (a huge amount in 1896).

So where the "sad" part? SPOILER ALERT! It was basically a scam. The sponsor was betting the two women would never make it across the country and never had the $10,000. She just wanted a book idea that would make her some money in the era of dime novels. So every step and all the hardships they undertook were for nothing. As Clara points out, they actually ended up $22 worse off than they were when they started. Helga's husband sold the farm equipment to the neighbors to be able to keep the farm, even though they then had no way to raise crops. The author's note at the end made things even worse - Clara and Helga were stuck in New York with no way to get home. They went to the Norwegian community in the city and were able to make enough money to live by doing laundry, etc., but couldn't get enough ahead to get a train ticket home. It was two years before they got back. And the experience turned out to be so bitter for them that they destroyed their journals and notes from the journey and didn't really talk about it. Clara was apparently estranged from her brothers and sisters for years (although they had reconciled in time for the author to have met her).

 

Not every story has a happy ending.