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In O My America!, the travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler embarks on a journey across the United States, guided by the adventures of six women who reinvented themselves as they chased the frontier west.
Wheeler's career has propelled her from pole to pole—camping in Arctic igloos, tracking Indian elephants, contemplating East African swamps so hot that toads explode—but as she stared down the uncharted territory of middle age, she found herself in need of a guide. "Fifty is a tough age," she writes. "Role models are scarce for women contemplating a second act." Scarce, that is, until she stumbled upon Fanny Trollope.
In 1827, Fanny, mother of Anthony, swapped England for Ohio with hopes of bolstering the family finances. There, failure and disappointment hounded the immigrant for three years before she returned home to write one of the most sensational travel accounts of the nineteenth century. Domestic Manners of the Americans made an instant splash on both sides of the Atlantic, where readers both relished and reviled Trollope's caustic take on the newly independent country. Her legacy became the stuff of legend: "Trollopize" emerged as a verb meaning "to abuse the American nation"; Mark Twain judged her the best foreign commentator on his country; the last king of France threw a ball in her honor. Fanny Trollope was forty-nine when she set out for America, and Wheeler, approaching fifty herself, was smitten. Fanny was living proof of life after fertility, and she led Wheeler to other trailblazers: the actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, the radical sociologist Harriet Martineau, the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, the traveler Isabella Bird, and the novelist Catherine Hubback—women born within half a century of one another who all reinvented themselves in a transforming America, the land of new beginnings.
In O My America!, Wheeler tracks her subjects from the Mississippi to the cinder cones of the Mayacamas at the tail end of the Cascades, armed with two sets of maps for each adventure: one current and one the women before her would have used. Bright, spirited, and tremendous tantrum-throwers, these ladies proved to be the best travel companion Wheeler could have asked for. "I had more fun writing this book than all my previous books put together," she writes—and it shows. Ambitious and full of life, O My America! is not only a great writer's reckoning with a young country, but also an exuberant tribute to fresh starts, second acts, and six unstoppable women.
- Sales Rank: #875873 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-09-24
- Released on: 2013-09-24
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
British travel writer Wheeler (Terra Incognita) narrates the journeys of six 19th-century Englishwomen whose battles to be themselves in a man's world as late middle age loomed were transformed by their sojourns—and in some instances, immigration—to a burgeoning America: Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony and a popular writer herself; Fanny Kemble, an actress turned unhappy slave-plantation wife turned abolitionist; radical social commentator Harriet Martineau; Illinois homesteader Rebecca Burland; invalid Isabella Bird, whose rugged adventures in Colorado put her illnesses into remission; and Jane Austen's niece, Catherine Hubback, who reinvented herself in Gold Rush–era San Francisco. Wheeler creates vivid portraits of these female adventurers with vastly differing personalities and experiences, but she conveys a depressing lack of feminist awareness, describing postmenopausal years as frumpy and the last gray chapters of female lives, referring to these brave women as her girls, and selecting them as subjects based on feelings of sympathy and empathic mockery. She seems shocked that their stories and tenacity revealed a land as exotic as any youthful Xanadu. The narrative includes detours into American history and minibiographies of male icons, including Erskine Caldwell, Al Cap, Buffalo Bill Cody, and John Steinbeck. Wheeler's parallel travelogue distracts enough to seem self-indulgent but is too fragmentary to add much insight. 47 b&w illus. and maps. Agent: Kathy Robbins, Robbins Office. (Sept.)
From Booklist
In midlife herself, British writer Wheeler retraces the steps of six nineteenth-century British female writers who traveled to the U.S. to reinvent themselves in midlife. Past their childbearing years and supposed value to society, the women traveled—some alone, some with husbands and children—to the wilderness of America and created influential second acts in the arts, literature, and social advocacy. Wheeler profiles Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony and author of Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832); the actress Fanny Kemble, who married a slaveholder and later became a passionate abolitionist; Harriet Martineau, a radical before she left for America and the author of Society in America (1837), which expounded on her abolitionist and suffragist views; Rebecca Burlend, a homesteader who left a memoir dictated to her son, detailing her pioneering experience in Illinois with her husband and five children; Isabella Bird, who traveled west to the Rockies, leaving a memoir of the arduous journey; and Catherine Hubback, a niece of Jane Austen, who left her husband in an asylum and ventured to San Francisco to ride the rails of the infant railroad lines. Thirty-five years after her own first journey to the U.S., Wheeler travels the paths of her heroines, comparing and contrasting the past and current social and physical landscapes for women. --Vanessa Bush
Review
“Funny and feisty . . . Hugely pleasurable.” ―Christopher Hirst, The Independent
“It probably cannot be taught--a writer either is or is not sympathetic, amusing, insightful and informative. Sara Wheeler has had it from the off. You want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind.” ―Roger Hutchinson, The Scotsman
“Precise . . . Compelling . . . A tribute to female exuberance in that most unsung of settings: middle age . . . Wheeler is consistently deft both at conveying atmosphere and character.” ―Talitha Stevenson, The Observer
“Perfect for women who want to shake a fist at the fading light. ” ―Ginny Dougary, The Guardian
“A true celebration. ” ―Ruth Scurr, The Daily Telegraph
“Wheeler is a writer of great composure and energy, and out of these American adventures she fashions something unexpected and compelling. ” ―Anthony Sattin, The Spectator
“Filled with rollicking anecdotes and entertaining facts.” ―Sarah Churchwell, New Statesman
“Touching . . . Carefully observed and finely written . . . [O My America! ] is not quite biography or history or memoir or the kind of travelogue for which this writer is justly praised but an oddly successful hybrid of them all. ” ―Kate Colquhoun, Daily Express
“[Wheeler] went looking for inspiration from women who traveled to America and found ‘second acts.' Fanny Trollope (mother of Anthony), Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, Rebecca Burlend, Isabella Bird and Catherine Hubback (Jane Austen's niece) all left Britain--some permanently and some for shorter trips--to find something in America. Some loved the United States, and some hated it, but all were changed by the experience. Those experiences make up the meat of the book, and they are worthy of chronicling. Kemble was a British actress who eventually contributed to the cause of the Union in the Civil War. Burlend conquered the harsh wilderness of Illinois with her family and left a legacy that can still be found today. The stories are at once varied and remarkably similar, and the resilience of the women is impressive . . . asides about menopause and middle age personalize the author's fascination for her subjects . . . Wheeler's gift for biography is strong, and . . . the author ably captures these women and their travels.” ―Kirkus
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
Banal and limited, this is a poorly written, self satisfied disappointment which could have been interesting and enlightening.
By Penelope Jacks
This is a truly terrible book. The author makes endless historical errors, has virtually no feminist perspective on her subjects or herself. It is self contradictory and full of specious psychological speculation . The tone is snarky and sarcastic, and the prose full of meaningless metaphors. Paragraphs are endless and contain a multitude of barely connected ideas. The six women profiled all deserve better than to be treated as semi-comic, semi-iconic models for the author who seems to have misunderstood every aspect of feminism from its historical origins to its meaning for contemporary women.
I generally love to read about women travelers, pioneers, and adventurers whose stories have too long been untold,so I was expecting to enjoy this book greatly. Sadly the author has managed to make six fascinating and complex women (whom she refers to as "my girls " ) seem banal and --despite multiple historical rants --strangely ahistorical. This book serves neither women nor history nor literature.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Really wanted to like this book
By Michele
I suggested this book for my book club and was excited about the premise. What a let down. The book club hated this book more than any other we have read and I eventually had to give in that they were right. With such a great frame for a story, I expected and wanted so much more. The book failed to deliver and really lost its way by the time we reach the third woman and her 'next act'. The first two women's stories were great, but the rest didn't follow. The author seems to have several trains of thought going, jumping between one woman's story, the author's own travel through a similar area and then a random tangent on Audubon or Steinbeck- what?! Like one book club member said, "It was like she just threw her notes for a book report together and forgot to edit." Kinda true.
The author also uses the book as an opportunity to demonstrate how America is no longer great, a bit of a mirror to what some of her women do- make fun of Americans or make sweeping judgements on Americans only to gain wealth and fame as a result. Sure, one could say that as an American, I am being defensive, but her perspective rings false. Has she really spent time understanding America of today? It seems more like casual observations by someone who wants to show off how smart she is. Like some of her women, she comes to America seeking something ((in her case- overcoming her fear of turning 50 and life being over- really?! Get over yourself for having such limited thinking in the first place in 2011! There are plenty of women over 50 who rock.)), some kind of awakening, salvation, success- and in all cases they find it, and in some cases they turn around and bite the hand that feeds them. Fascinating. I could forgive this, but the last few stories didn't feel like second acts at all- they just traveled and lived in another country and maybe wrote letters about it. Hundreds of women did that. I was imagining significant second acts of reinvention. Not letters home while milking the cow or doing needlepoint. This is of course hard work, but better suited for a book on life on the frontier. Hmmm. She also finds time to poke fun at her women- especially the way they look. Yay for female empowerment!
What a bummer, but I guess the book makes me feel like I could be a writer if this kind of disjointed, rambling collection of stories gets published.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Good in Parts
By Lyn Relph
I have to say that my final response to Sara Wheeler's writing is much like her response to Harriet Martineau's.
Wheeler travels the routes of seven nineteenth-century British women into and across the U.S. in search of herself at midlife. At the end we leave her in the little mountain town of Mineral in the shadow of California's Mount Lassen, a volcano last active in 1917. So she shares some spirit with one of her "subjects," Isabella Bird, who in Colorado discovered something within herself almost exactly like the discovery John Muir made in California's mountains. Isabella found "the divine in nature."
The stories of the seven intrepid women are fascinating. Wheeler did much solid research before hitting the trail. She shares with readers much new information about her seven visitors and the state of things in mid-nineteenth-century America. For one example, she helps us picture the situation when Cincinnati was among the largest cities in the nation and Fanny Trollope built a pleasure house there.
But Ms Wheeler could well have left some of her baggage at home. Here she is responding to Fanny Trollope, the first of her seven, comparing her to Alexis de Toqueville: "The difference between Toqueville and Fanny Trollope turns on this point. His was the more flexible mind; he was an intellectual, and in America experience informed his intellect. She was an empiricist, content to base broad judgements on a short spell of personal experience colored by her own shortcomings and prejudice" (p. 56). So Trollope's was the lesser mind, I suppose she's telling us, for what reason I cannot imagine. Trollope slogged through swamps, ate disgusting things at mealtimes and spent sleepless nights getting a firsthand look at this new place called The United States, and we're to think less of her because she hadn't the kind of mind Toqueville had? Once again, I suppose, dancing backwards in high heels isn't enough.
I have to admit a bias of my own: I bought the book primarily for Chapter 3, the travels of Harriet Martineau. Harriet was not only an abolitionist and woman's rights advocate, she was also an atheist, technically a Unitarian, daughter and sister of prominent Unitarian men. I thought she was way ahead of her time, and she offended American hosts by coming out against slavery in public while she was here.
Wheeler earlier told us that "An ill-favored spinster, Harriet was industrious, progressive and high-minded" (p. 78). Now, in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, she seems to admire Harriet's spunk: "Harriet left her ear trumpet in her valise, tucked up her gown, tied a hanky over her head ('like the witches in Macbeth') and spent the day scrambling over loose limestone. The guides' candle cast monstrous shadows. 'Everything appears alive,' she wrote: 'the slowly growing stalactites, the water ever-dropping into the plashing pool, the whispering airs—all seem conscious'" (p. 138). But when it comes to Harriet's mind? "Many of Harriet's aphorisms are meaningless. She just couldn't stop herself coming out with them, like a sausage machine jammed to ON" (p. 144). Taken altogether, "Harriet's work no longer has much significance; she is worth remembering for her achievements in a man's world and for her personal commitment to winning through" (p. 144). Wheeler ranks Martineau as second-rate.
So of course I tend to rank Wheeler as second-rate because she couldn't get past Martineau's plainness, her deafness, her eccentricity, her atheism, her being cured of a chronic ailment by mesmerism, her taking up science and other liberal causes.
Wheeler returns home ready to tackle the second half of her life, but don't look for her out in public leading any charges. Her book reads well in many places — and it has some informative photos — but it ends up pretty flat and uninspiring.
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