Crossing the Wide Forever by Missouri VaunMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books in exchange for an honest review.
In 1856 two women, separately, begin to head west. Lillie Ellis has an inheritance of land that she’s decided, against her mother’s advice/desire, to go assume. She’s setting out from New York, heading to Kansas via St Louis and Independence Missouri. Meanwhile, Cody Walsh cannot take another whipping from her father, and so she’s also going to head west – starting from Arkansas with some vague idea to head off to join her two brothers in California. She’s also planning to head through St. Louis and Independence Missouri.
Lillie is from a higher level of society, a richer tier, though not sure of society position (as in, not sure if they just have money or if they also ‘have a name’). I’ve gotten the impression, right or wrong, that the higher up you go in society/wealth in the 1800s, the fewer ‘rights/privileges/freedoms’ that a woman will be granted. Well, Lillie has a certain greater freedom, due to a somewhat indulgent father (getting a tutor for art and the like). But even with this limited freedom, Lillie still feels both stifled and undermined – because she’s female. She might be allowed to paint, but she’s not going to have a great deal of luck getting past the ‘she’s a female artist’ burden. The land inheritance is Lillie’s breath of fresh air – her chance to have greater freedom, which she leaps upon, though she doesn’t know much about the West, or farming for that matter.
Cody, we learn almost instantly, comes from an average size family, maybe a little small (for a farming family in the 1800s). She has two older brothers and one younger sister. When she was ten, Cody’s mother died. The father, who apparently was a nice enough man before the death, fell apart completely, and crawled into a bottle of whiskey and only comes out to savagely whip his children. The two older brothers have fled to California, but Cody stayed behind to try to raise her, then, four year old sister. The book starts years later (something like 8 or 9 years later, making Cody about 18 or 19 in the book – based entirely on a vague believe that Ellen, the younger sister, is around 12 when Cody finally leaves the small remote isolated farm), and Cody is taking a whipping. Ellen, being clumsy, knocked over papa’s drink. Naturally that calls for a whipping, Cody jumped in front of the whip, but eventually knocks out her father as it’s just too much. She’s off to the west, stopping briefly with her mother’s sister (who lives 2 miles, or so, away who they haven’t seen in about 5 (or is it 9?) years). Up until this point in time, Cody has lived a life of being kind of manly but presenting as a female. The aunt tells Cody that she’d get better luck dressing up in her dead son’s clothing and pretending to be a man. So Cody does. Which is putting things somewhat wrongly – Cody already had had the idea that she might pass herself off as a man, she just hadn’t put that idea into practice.
Eventually Cody and Lillie separately reach St. Louis – and they meet when a stationmaster at the station calls over a young man to help Lillie with her baggage. And no, it is neither love nor lust at first sight. They go their separate ways only to bump into each other again on the steamship heading from St. Louis to Independence. Again they do not instantly attach themselves to each other or find deep longing love/lust, but they do strike up a friendship that very quickly becomes more (and no, I mean becomes a method for both to continue West with the ‘cover’ of the other (view spoiler)).
It’s hard to mention what happens next as I’m on the edge as it is with revealing too much (if I haven’t already crossed over). Everything else I can mention leads directly off of the spoiler above so, can’t mention anything else.
What I can say: As noted, Cody is somewhere around 18 to 19 years old, ‘had no curves to speak of, and she was tall, at the high end of five feet. She’d always kept her hair short too.’ ‘She was eighteen now.’ So, her age is actually mentioned. 18 in 1856. And has no real trouble passing herself off as a man (or at least as a boy, due to lack of facial hair). Lillie, on the other hand is somewhere near her mid-twenties (based on a comment that someone she had meet, Beth, ‘seemed close to her age, maybe a few years older, but definitely still in her mid-twenties.’) So there is an age difference, and a cultural difference involved here.
The book was quite interesting, rich in certain areas, less so in others (ooh, ooh, give me details! . . . um, well, occasionally I rather felt as if I really was there – the muddy rain filled wagon journey, the bouncing train, the smokey air of St. Louis; and . . . um . . . not exactly sure what to put down as ‘less rich’). For a good long while I was thinking that the book was quite strong, quite interesting, but not anything at or above five star. But then I kept reading. And experiencing, and the book really did leave me feeling like it is at about that level – maybe, perchance, 4.75? Maybe lower at 4.66? Somewhere between 4.66 to 4.92.
One of the first things I thought of when I learned of the book, and thought of as I read the book, is that there aren’t exactly many lesbian fiction books involving two women heading west, one of whom has assumed a male persona. The most ‘famous’ example I can think of would be Jae’s Backwards to Oregon, which I’ve also read and enjoyed. So, compare and contrast? Despite the differences in length, some of the back story that ‘Crossing’ provided, isn’t actually in ‘Backwards to Oregon’ – things like the time the ‘woman posing as a man’ didn’t pose as a man. But yes, both books involve one obvious woman, and one woman who dressed up and acted like a man; and both books follow the two women ‘to the west’. And both include . . . the thing I put in spoiler somewhere above. But in many ways the two are completely different books. Though I’m going more by memory as it has been more than three years since I read ‘Backwards’. I’ll just lightly note that the women in Backwards seemed older, to me, and of a . . . ‘lower class’ – at least background wise (since, while the book opens with the ‘man’ being an officer in the military, ‘he’ also was the daughter of a prostitute, and the other main character in Backwards worked as a prostitute). And, um . . . stuff. Heh, just been too long for me to do a compare/contrast. Oh, and (view spoiler).
Enjoyable book. Quite readable. Oh, and, somewhat surprising to me, much sex.
Rating: 4.79
Expected publication: June 20th 2017
May 16 2017
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