These is My Words

“It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There’s no starting over nor undoing the steps I’ve taken. It isn’t like I’d want to.... It’s just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch.”

These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories, A Novel by Nancy E. Turner, 1998


distinctions

~Arizona Author Award
~finalist, Willa Cather Award

first words

“A storm is rolling in, and that always makes me a little sad and wistful so I got it in my head to set to paper all these things that have got us this far on our way through this heathen land.”

the premise

An indomitable young woman born and raised on the Arizona frontier records the events of her life as she matures from daughter into wife, mother, and business woman.

my thoughts

       It’s been a long time since I’ve picked up a book and couldn’t put it down (of course it's been a long time since I picked up a book, period). This novel is gripping, chock full of adventure and romance (and one of the sweetest love stories I’ve read in a good long while, I might add). But it’s the voice of the protagonist, Sarah, that made me fall in love with her story: honest, stubborn, tender, gritty, intelligent, passionate. She’s so full of contradictions, so real, I considered looking for her in the historical records of Tucson, even though the disclaimer on the copyright page clearly states she is "the product of the author’s imagination.” Turner's powerful imagination has successfully given us a heroine whose thoughts and feelings resonate with many modern women without compromising on the sensibilities appropriate to her time and place--a feat often difficult to accomplish in historical fiction.
      I’ve always been a sucker for the epistolary novel form. I love the sense of immediacy and intimacy a diary or exchange of letters gives the reader, as well as the inevitably unreliable narrator that emerges from the form. I love the ironic ways the reader learns about the narrator from the details he or she chooses to reveal in the comments and actions of others. These is My Words delivers on this dynamic in spades. All you have to do is pay attention to a certain Army captain to know what I mean. I’d best leave it at that.
      Is this a perfect novel? No. As much as I love it, the diary trope has its pitfalls, and for all her skill, Turner does trip up once or twice, leaving at least one small plot gap and a handful of stylistic breaches. And the quantity, intensity and serendipity of Sarah’s adventures, not to mention the minute and fascinating details with which she records those adventures, stretches credibility a bit. But that’s also a big part of what makes this novel so engrossing, and it’s a small price to pay for getting to know a flesh-and-blood character like Sarah Agnes Prine.

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