The really story in the book, though, is how and why this story was nearly lost. Helga, a Norwegian immigrant, and her husband, Ole were suffering from tough financial times. The lure of $10,000 made Helga feel like she could save her family. She planned to earn additional money after completion of her journey by publishing an illustrated book about the walk. She documented her entire trip and she wrote lengthy letters to her family back home. Years later, she wrote her story again. Yet somehow all these written primary sources vanished (which is explained in the book). The story that Hunt presents was something that was pieced together from many secondary sources.
The story of Helga and Clara's journey was fascinating. It was like a reverse Oregon Trail story. (Boy, do I love Oregon Trail stories!) The pair had to hit all the western state capitols they walked thru, meeting with political leaders along the way. The 1896 political climate sounds very similar to our divided country, now. Helga and Clara were on opposite sides of the presidential election (between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan). But Helga's eyes were opened to the plight of women's suffrage. Completing the walk gave Helga a new appreciation for the capabilities of herself and of all women.
Victorian views of women were that they were frail and inferior to men. I can't imagine committing to walking unaccompanied across the United States now, in 2018. Over 100 years ago, much of Helga's walk was thru wilderness! And she didn't take the trip with the support of a wagon train. She only had her daughter - who styled her hair with a curling iron regularly while they were walking - and needed to rely upon the goodness of strangers. Incredible!
But as I said earlier, the real story was the fact that after these two women took this incredible risk, the story was nearly lost. Cultural norms and expectations, family dynamics and tragedy all played a hand in the outcome. That's what I'm really interested in discussing with my book club.
The story was fascinating and I look forward to discussing this with my book club. My biggest disappointment was that we never got to hear Helga's own words and that she never got to share the story with her granddaughter, Thelma. Despite those disappointments, I would still recommend the book.
I'll end with a few things I highlighted while reading, included here more for my reference when I discuss this with my book club rather than to spark any conversation with my readers. But here you are.
She faced the question, "what does fear keep you from doing?" and decided she was unwilling to let fear or disapproval keep her from action.
In an increasingly urbanized and industrialized America, ailing farmers felt forgotten, and many joined the Populist party to fight for reform of the injustices they experienced. In routing languages, Bryan built his campaign to tap into the needs of those he called the "struggling masses" and "humbler members of society." He reaffirmed their worth to the country, citing them as the Americans who produced the crops and goods that allowed the nation to live.
He also excoriated the "capitalistic class" that "owns money, trades in money and grows rich as the people grow poor." Bryan named and identified their fears of abuse from the powerful corporate elite, from Wall Street, and from the railroad and mining magnates. Captains of industry such as John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil), J.P. Morgan (banking financier), and James J. Hill (Union Pacific) passionately supported William McKinley and the Republican agenda, and they wielded enormous political clout. Bryan fought openly against "the heads of these great trusts" that he believed put corporate profit above people.
McKinley proposed protective tariffs as the best way "to get work for the masses," which particularly appealed to urban factory workers in the East.
During the following spring, Helga and Clara faced the reality of being penniless women eeking out a living in New York City. ... They moved to Brooklyn to look for work because it was a less expensive place to live than Manhattan.
She had flagrantly broken the most basic code of Victorian and Norwegian motherhood: mothers belong in the home.
The humility of her destitution in Brooklyn taught her that sometimes individual effort alone was not enough in an unjust system. No matter how hard she and Clara worked in New York, with women's wages so low, she felt helplessly trapped.
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