Anna Solomon’s novel, THE LITTLE BRIDE, is historical fiction at its best; literary, about the pioneer days, and introspective. It’s also timeless, which is an aspect of historical fiction that matters. I like literary fiction to read like an old memoir, like the Little House series or Anne of Green Gables. I like to look through windows into past times, and Solomon has acheived built a window.
Solomon’s writing is as deliberate as her character, Minna. Minna is obstinate and careful and, if she was writing a cover letter, she could say she’s detail oriented. She’s complex, at once saving money and then splurging on useless things before a long passage on a ship. Minna seems to have no moral compass guiding her, and subsists on memories of her father before he died, and her mother before she left them. She makes little effort to connect with people around her, because she’s focused on surviving, an independent young woman who considers becoming a bookkeeper before she realizes she’s never seen another young girls keeping books.
Solomon weaves together elements of Judaism with the ruggedness of the pioneer West. Minna’s a mail order bride, and when she crosses the Atlantic to join Max, she thinks America and this man will solve all her problems. Things are a little different though, and she finds herself fascinated by his son, horrified by the farming way of life, and feeling guilty about what she perceives as her uselessness. Minna is by turns greedy and resolved to make something of herself, doing nothing but bathing in a creek one day, and then whitewashing and learning how to cook the next.
Things keep going wrong, and Minna is constantly being tested. And while Minna’s way of life on Max’s farm is interesting, I couldn’t help myself being more and more intrigued by the life Minna would be living after Solomon ends her story.
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