Fiction

Letters from Yellowstone

Name: Letters from Yellowstone
Author: Diane Smith
ISBN: 9780140291810

by Diane Smith

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Overview

In the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) Bartram—a spirited young woman with a love for botany—is invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. The study's leader, a mild-mannered professor from Montana, assumes she is a man, and is less than pleased to discover the truth. Once the scientists overcome the shock of having a woman on their team, they forge ahead on a summer of adventure, forming an enlightening web of relationships as they move from Mammoth Hot Springs to a camp high in the backcountry. But as they make their way collecting amid Yellowstone's beauty the group is splintered by differing views on science, nature, and economics. In the tradition of A. S. Byatt's Angels and Insects and Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever, this delightful novel captures an ever-fascinating era and one woman's attempt to take charge of her life.

Synopsis

In the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) Bartram--a spirited young woman with a love for botany--is invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. The study's leader, a mild-mannered professor from Montana, assumes she is a man, and is less than pleased to discover the truth. Once the scientists overcome the shock of having a woman on their team, they forge ahead on a summer of adventure, forming an enlightening web of relationships as they move from Mammoth Hot Springs to a camp high in the backcountry. But as they make their way collecting amid Yellowstone's beauty the group is splintered by differing views on science, nature, and economics. In the tradition of A. S. Byatt's Angels and Insects and Andrea Barrett's Ship Fever, this delightful novel captures an ever-fascinating era and one woman's attempt to take charge of her life.

Barbara Nordby

The real beauty of this book, the lively way it intertwines the summertime landscapes and wildlife of Yellowstone National Park with the wonder and challenges visitors faced there in 1898, is accomplished through its epistolary form. The majority of the letters, all feeling true to period language, are penned by medical student Alex Bartram, who relies on her endearingly sarcastic wit and strict, scientific methods to prove her capabilities in a male-dominated field. Through their letters to colleagues and family, all the members of the wildlife-cataloging project reveal rich opinions of their successes and failures with both their work and the other Yellowstone inhabitants.

Alex learns through these strangers' guidance as she struggles to find independence from a world where her rock-climbing, male-bonding behavior is embarrassingly unladylike. She establishes a religious belief in nature's order during this unique period of growth in both United States history and a woman's life.

About the Author, Diane Smith

Diane Smith, a writer and editor for more than 20 years, is also an eclectic Witch.

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Editorials

Barbara Nordby

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the spring of 1898, the Smithsonian Institution organized an expedition for botanical research in Wyoming's Yellowstone Park. First-time novelist Smith, an environmental and science writer, follows amateur botanist A.E. Bartram's summer as the lone woman in that party of male professionals, telling her story through detailed letters and the occasional Western Union telegram. When Cornell student Bartram arrives in the camp, she receives a cool reception from expedition leader H.G. Merriam, who expected "A.E." to be a man. As the botanists strive to get along and gather flora unique to the Rocky Mountain area, they encounter the U.S. Cavalry and Native Americans. Disturbed by Professor Merriam's inventive, sometimes nonscientific methods, Dr. Philip Aber of the Smithsonian visits the park to inspect and perhaps close down the project. The troubled Dr. Aber finally wanders off unguided into one of Yellowstone's scalding thermal springs; his death adds to the party's web of tensions. As life in Yellowstone changes her, Miss Bartram must deal with her stiff-necked Cornell mentor, Professor Lester King, whose "black-and-white" thinking she finally comes to reject. Miss Bartram lights up the novel with her admirable intelligence, wit and honest desire to learn from everyone, but Smith wisely prevents her epistles from overwhelming the other characters' voices. Instead, the collage of letters and telegrams produces a Rashomon effect--the same actions are viewed from many perspectives with no one narrator dominant. Serenely attentive, deliberately paced, as careful with psychology and history as it is with its botany, Smith's epistolary narrative makes a worthy addition to the expanding category of history-of-science novels. Author tour. July Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

This epistolary novel charmingly achieves its modest goals. The letter-writers are members of a pioneering group of naturalists who spend the summer of 1898 discovering, studying, and drawing the flora and fauna of the new national park. Only the mildest of conflicts give the novel its momentum—should the scientists use the traditional folk names of plants or only the binomial Latinate forms? Are the Native Americans dependable sources of information about medicinal plants? Will the U.S. military be able to sidetrack plans to bring a railroad line into the park? The central character is Alex Bartram, who is revealed to the flustered leader of the expedition as a woman (Alexandria) only after she arrives at Mammoth Hot Springs in late May. The place of women in the field and in science itself forms a central theme in the book. Since the novel was first published in 1999, the reader can be assured that Miss Bartram conducts herself flawlessly and proves herself essential to the ultimate success of the summer's work. It's no accident that she is a descendent of the greatest family of naturalists in American history. Pleasant and unassuming, Letters from Yellowstone manages to entertain us with an appealing set of characters—including a talking raven—and inform us about the hazards and pleasures of scientific fieldwork. Teachers of biology and ecology might take note. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Penguin, 226p, 21cm, 99-12904, $12.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Michael P. Healy; English Teacher, Wood River H.S., Hailey, ID January 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 1)

Library Journal

Smith has done a fine job with her first novel. Using the anonymity of correspondence, young A.E. (Alexandria) Bartram, a medical student and avid botanist, procures a spot on a Smithsonian-sponsored expedition to Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1898. After the initial confusion over her gender and abilities subsides, Alex is accepted as part of a team that includes a mild-mannered professor, an inebriated agriculturist, a seldom-seen entomologist, a Chinese cook, a Crow Indian family, and a series of benefactors. As the weeks pass, Alex finds herself "committed to both illustrating as well as collecting" the flora and fauna of the park. Told entirely in letters, the book offers abundant detail and a mannered style that perfectly capture the attitudes and atmosphere of the era. Display this title next to A.S. Byatt's Angels and Insects and Annie Dillards's The Living. Recommended for all fiction collections.--Charlotte L. Glover, Ketchikan P.L., AK Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A colorful and credible first novel, by science/environment writer Smith, takes an epistolary approach to a tale of a budding young naturalist who's invited to join a Smithsonian-backed expedition to Yellowstone in the summer of 1898, but who first has to overcome the dismay of her colleagues when they discover their naturalist is a woman. Although the initial correspondence between A.E. Bartram and the expedition leader, Montana college professor Merriam, is cordial and professional, the first sight of Alex (short for Alexandria) after she arrives in Yellowstone gives rise to a different dynamic. The mild-mannered, bespectacled Merriam hems and haws about what to do with her. Then, knowing how desperately shorthanded his expedition is, he decides to let her come along—secretly hoping she'll soon call it quits herself. Alex quickly proves her competence, with a degree of scientific rigor easily exceeding Merriam's own, yet her independence precipitates the team's first crisis: she goes in search of specimens one day without telling anyone where she's headed, so that when a spring snowstorm envelops them all, Merriam goes to her rescue. Then, however, he tumbles off a cliff and needs her to keep him alive. Other trials involve another member of the team, a brandy-soused meteorologist who prefers the park's hotels to the outdoors, and Alex's mentor and fiancé, a Cornell biology professor, who is sent by the young woman's parents to Montana to bring her home. The fiancé, unable to adjust to Alex's new free-spirited behavior, soon goes back east alone, and Alex finds herself changing even more, confronted with Merriam's broader view of science and his obvious respectfor the herbal knowledge of his Crow Indian assistant. A warm, satisfying story. Despite repetition from overlapping correspondence and rather conventional plot twists, the magic of a Yellowstone summer shimmers here enticingly.