Kate Mulhall A romance of the Oregon Trail

About the book

Kate grows up in Missouri with practical abilities and firm opinions, including a refusal to imagine marriage to a man who owns slaves. Attraction and neighborhood gossip complicate that conviction before her family begins the long journey toward Oregon. River crossings, animals, weather, illness, and the organization of travel make migration a demanding collective undertaking. Relationships formed or tested on the trail continue into the search for a settled life in the Northwest. Ezra Meeker frames the romance with his own interest in preserving pioneer memory, and the book eventually turns toward the physical traces and commemorative marking of the route. Its portrayal of westward settlement carries the assumptions of that commemorative project, while giving particular attention to women's endurance and choices within it.

• Migration and endurance
• Love and conviction
• Pioneer memory

Why read it

The romance connects the daily ordeal of an overland journey with the later question of how that experience should be remembered.

English 1926 text with Robert Bruce's foreword and historical appendix