cover image Children of the West: Family Life on the Frontier

Children of the West: Family Life on the Frontier

Cathy Luchetti. W. W. Norton & Company, $39.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-393-04913-8

""`I remember walking just ahead of that halted wagon.... I recall so vividly the feeling of wonderment and perplexity at the bigness of the world,'"" says a woman of her frontier childhood. In Children of the West: Frontier Family Life, Cathy Luchetti's astute, readable text shares space with 19th- and early 20th-century photographs. Later chapters cover Native Americans, African-Americans, Asians and Mexicans. Luchetti (Women of the West) aptly details common and particular experiences of pioneer wives and children. "" `My soul rebelled against having more children.... But my husband... persisted in his right to his sensual indulgences,' "" laments one woman. ""O! When I look back at those bright loving days... with Father, Mother, brothers and sisters gathered in groups round about, how glad I am to have been one of them,"" says a woman raised in Ohio. ( May)