In Need of a Good Wife (40 page)

The fiction writer in me began to speculate. What if the person hired to match bachelors and brides was not a wily businessman but a woman, a woman at the end of her rope, who needed a way to get out of New York City? Naïve but determined, Clara, as I began to think of her, would be intrigued by the advertisements plastered all over New York by the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1860s, promising cheap farms and free homes in eastern Nebraska. The newly completed eastern segment of the Transcontinental Railroad promised a fairly easy journey across New York state and Michigan, through Chicago and across Iowa to the Missouri River, where Omaha was growing on the opposite bank.

In 1866, the Civil War was over, but its consequences still echoed throughout the country. Many eastern cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were teeming with widows who had lost their soldier husbands and single women who had never had the chance to marry before the men went away. The fate of many of these women was in jeopardy; marriage represented their only hope for avoiding poverty. Meanwhile, many young men had traveled west during and after the war to claim land through the Homestead Act, which made 160 acres available very cheaply to citizens who would settle and work the land. After five years, the government would turn over the deed to the settler. For immigrants coming from European countries where land ownership was the exclusive privilege of the wealthy, the Homestead Act was a remarkable gift. But settlers found that the backbreaking work was lonely. They longed for wives and children to help them fulfill their vision of a new life.

Once these single men and women knew of each other’s existence, letters, I realized, would play a central role in their relationships. I found inspiration for what these letters might contain in
Hearts West
and the Library of Congress archive on prairie settlement in Nebraska. One letter in particular, from Uriah Oblinger to the woman he hoped to bring to his settled land as his bride, moved me. “Until I receive
your
reply,” he wrote, “I shall write to no other lady.”

I began to imagine a particular town full of men, northwest of Omaha on the Platte River. I had read about the “Hell on wheels towns” that sprang up in Nebraska, where rail workers would hastily assemble villages—usually little more than a boardinghouse and a tavern—to sustain them while they worked a segment of the line. When they moved west to continue work, the town would be either dismantled or abandoned. But sometimes people stayed behind and developed those towns further. Destination, the town of my story, would be that sort of place, abused by rough, transient men, but enduring because of the efforts of some to make it a respectable place.

Clara would set her sights on this town. And the women who accompanied her—a cast of characters that soon included Rowena, a war widow, and Elsa, a laundress who expected very little from the world—would bring with them the stories of their lives, their pain and longing, their hopes for what the future might bring. When they arrived in Destination, nothing would work out quite the way they had imagined. And the real story would begin.

In Need of a Good Wife

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. The concept of “going west” figured large in late nineteenth century American culture. Enthusiasm for the opportunity to leave the comfort of the eastern cities and forge new settlements embodied both pragmatic ambition and a kind of mythology about freedom and self-reliance that often fell short of hopes. What does going west mean to each of the main characters in
   In Need of a Good Wife
   ? How are their expectations confirmed and upended?
   

2. Friendship plays an important role for the characters in this novel, both among the women and between women and men. What does friendship have to offer that love and marriage cannot provide?
   

3. Names are important in
   In Need of a Good Wife
   . Some characters change their names for various reasons (the new wives, Clara, and Ully); others are uneasy with the names they’ve been given (Rowena as “Mother” and Randall as “Mayor”). Even the name of the town requires an explanation. What do names signify for these characters?
   

4. What were some of the reasons the brides had for pursuing the mail-order bride experiment? What do those reasons say about the kind of people who built the West in this country? About the kind of country the women settlers were hoping the United States would become?
   

5. As Clara narrowed down the list of potential brides early in the story, she seemed to be screening for a particular type of woman. What kind of character traits was she looking for? What was she hoping to avoid? What do these criteria say, if anything, about Clara herself?
   

6. How would you describe Elsa’s faith? Is it different from the sort of faith espoused by either of the two Manhattan City ministers who appear in the first chapter? What role does faith play in Elsa’s experience of the journey west?
   

7. How does the birth of the lamb take on significance for Elsa throughout the story? What has changed for her by the time the lamb finally comes?
   

8. Do you find Rowena to be a likable character? Why or why not?
   

9. Why is Rowena drawn to Tomas? How does their relationship change her and the path she is on?
   

10. Mayor Cartwright is preoccupied with the need to “be of use,” a tenet that has been for him both a saving grace and a source of frustration and disappointment. How does the need for purpose drive the mayor and the other characters in this story? How does it get them into trouble?
    

11. The novel contains this description of the loss Clara and George suffered: “They shared a secret sorrow and it bound them together. What they had endured was stronger than anything—stronger than love or hate or disappointment or anger—and no matter how [Clara] tried to escape, to begin again, the sorrow pulled her back in like a tide.” How does loss and grief affect the characters in this story? How do varying responses to loss impact what happens to them?
    

12. What do you think will happen with Randall and Clara after the story ends?
    

Table of Contents

Praise for

Fall 1866

Clara

Rowena

Elsa

Clara

Elsa

Rowena

The Letters

Winter 1867

Spring 1867

Clara

Elsa

Clara

Rowena

Clara

Rowena

Elsa

Clara

Rowena

Clara

Elsa

Summer 1867

Clara

Rowena

Elsa

Clara

Rowena

Elsa

Clara

Rowena

Elsa

Rowena

Elsa

Clara

Rowena

Clara

Rowena

Clara

Rowena

Elsa

Clara

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

READERS GUIDE