The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton ─ A Novel

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres 'Rousing . . . Action-packed . . . A gripping story about love, fortitude, and convictions that are worth fighting for.' -- Los Angeles Times A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK 'POWERFUL . . . Smiley takes us back to Kansas in 1855, a place of rising passions and vast uncertainties. Narrated in the spirited, unsentimental voice of 20-year-old Lidie Newton, the novel is at once an ambitious examination of a turning point in history and the riveting story of one woman's journey into uncharted regions of place and self.' -- Chicago Tribune '[A] grand tale of the moral and political upheavals igniting antebellum frontier life and a heroine so wonderfully fleshed and unforgettable you will think you are listening to her story instead of reading it. Smiley may have snared a Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres . . . but it is with Lydia (Lidie) Harkness Newton that she emphatically captures our hearts. . . . The key word in Smiley's title is Adventures, and Lydia's are crammed with breathless movement, danger, and tension; populated by terrifically entertaining characters and securely grounded in telling detail.' -- The Miami Herald 'SMILEY BRILLIANTLY EVOKES MID-19TH-CENTURY LIFE. . . . Richly imagined and superbly written, Jane Smiley's new novel is an extraordinary accomplishment in an already distinguished career.' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution 'A SPRAWLING EPIC . . . A garrulous, nights-by-the-hearth narrative not unlike those classics of the period it emulates. In following a rebellious young woman of 1855 into Kansas Territory and beyond, the novel is so persuasively authentic that it reads like a forgotten document from the days of Twain and Stowe.' -- The Boston Sunday Globe 'CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINING, FILLED WITH ACTION AND IDEAS.' -- The New York Times Book Review 'ENGAGING . . . [A] HARROWING ADVENTURE . . . This picaresque tale presents a series of remarkable characters, particularly in the inexperienced narrator, whose graphic descriptions of travel and domestic life before the Civil War strip away romantic notions of simpler times. . . . Smiley has created an authentic voice in this struggle of a young woman to live simply amid a swirl of deadly antagonism.' -- The Christian Science Monitor 'A fine historical novel that describes a fascinating time and place . . . It is both funny and subtle, rich in ideas . . . Smiley has created a better all-around piece of fiction than any of her previous work, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres .' -- The Wall Street Journal 'Smiley is a writer of rare versatility who travels widely in her creative endeavors. She proved her mastery of both short fiction and the novel with three sterling works ( The Age of Grief , Ordinary Love and Good Will , and A Thousand Acres ); her fondness for history had already been established with The Greelanders . In 1995, she successfully extended her repertoire to comedy with the hilarious academic satire Moo . What her new novel shares with all these works is its authorial intelligence.' -- The Boston Sunday Globe

Jane Smiley is the author of eight previous works of fiction, including The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, Ordinary Love & Good Will, A Thousand Acres (which won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize), and Moo. She lives in northern California.


From the Hardcover edition.