These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner

Growing up and watching shows like "Little House on the Prairie" I remember thinking I would never have survived that life.  Just cooking or doing the laundry looked like a monumental undertaking and this was a television show!  Undoubtedly, the reality of life as a settler or homesteader was certainly more difficult and intense than anything Hollywood could dream up.  Nancy Turner gave us just such a story in her novel These Is My Words a semi-biographical retelling of her relative Sarah Prine.  Based on the diary Sarah wrote between the years of 1881-1901 the life of this extraordinary young woman was given to us in her own words.  The tale begins as Sarah and her family traveled across the southern regions of the Arizona territory seeking a new life.  The trials they faced were daunting to say the least--Indian attacks, harsh weather, wild and dangerous animals, criminal and amoral men and few if any friendly people were their reality.  The resilience of Sarah is the heart of the story.  We watch her grow from a backwards girl to an entrepreneurial frontier woman.  She taught herself through reading any book she could find and was eventually able to earn the equivalence of a high school degree.  She created a business that allowed her to buy land and cattle and eventually a luxurious life for the time.  She protected her family fiercely and earned the respect of all those she encountered and the love of a rugged, Army captain.  Sarah's life was not easy, but she met it with enthusiasm and determination and she never bowed down to forces that could easily have caused her give up or break down.  I truly admired this pioneer woman.  She is the woman I would want to be if I had lived in this wild, untamed time in our country.