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Reviewed by: Jo
Rogers, MyShelf.Com WESTERN PASSAGE is the story of the first wagon train, the Oregon Emigrating Company, to Oregon. It is seen through the eyes of Abby Meacham, a young widow who decides to leave the memories of her dead husband and infant daughter in Greene County, Ohio, and brave the dangers of the unknown to make a new life as a schoolteacher in Oregon. Aided by an old trapper named Jacob Chalmers, she outfits her wagon and heads west. Though Abby, Jacob and Sam Oakley, the young man with whom Abby falls in love, are fictional characters, the other people in the story are not. These are the people who actually made the journey to blaze the Oregon Trail. The hardships they endured and the events told of were taken from diaries and letters written by the men and women who pioneered the way west. In this book, we learn what it took to go to Oregon, lessons learned the hard way. But WESTERN PASSAGE is more than a history lesson. It is a handbook those who pioneer colonizing a new world need to read. Many of the lessons in cooperation among a diverse group of people still need to be learned. The privations and hardships will be there though they will take something of a different form. One lesson, though will always hold true. When you go somewhere no one else has gone, take everything you might need with you, because there will be no convenience store or mall to get it on the way! |
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