The Daughter's Walk, by Jane Kirkpatrick

I have been taken in by tales of cross-country races, like the "Bunion Derby" of 1928 (I reviewed C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race here.) and the more recent Trans American foot race (I reviewed David Horton's A Quest for Adventure here.)  More recently, I followed Jeff Rudisill's walk across America (here).  So I was interested to hear about Helga and Clara Estby's walk across America in 1896. 

Think about coast-to-coast travel at that time: transcontinental railroad tracks had been completed less than 30 years before.  But Helga Estby boldly accepted a wager from sponsors in the clothing industry to walk from their home in Spokane, Washington to New York.  If they complete the walk in the allotted time, they would be awarded $10,000.  That money would have saved their farm from foreclosure and helped their struggling family. 

Jane Kirkpatrick, an accomplished writer of historical fiction, pieced together the limited historical record of their walk and creates an epic story of the Estby family.  The account of the walk itself fills only about a quarter of the book.  Most of the book deals with the impact on the family, specifically Clara's life after the walk.  Two of Helga's children died while they were on the journey, so the grief-stricken, controlling patriarch forbade the rest of the family from even mentioning "the walk."  Helga and her daughter Clara, then 19, had kept detailed accounts of the walk, but the family destroyed those records.  This family rift bothered me.  Talk about holding grudges: twenty years later, Clara was still ostracized from her family. 

Helga and Clara sporting the racy, scandalous outfits.

Kirkpatrick paints a detailed picture of life at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, especially from the women's perspective.  The walk itself promoted the "reform skirt" which showed the ankles (actually, the ankle high boots or stockings; bare ankles would have been too racy) and did not have a corset.  That alone caused some scandal; women walking unescorted added to it.  Their biggest supporters were suffragists; remember, at this time women could not vote.  The suffrage movement was in full swing, but it would be another 20 years before women were granted the vote.  Excluded from family life, Clara set out on her own, making a living in the fur industry, buying and selling real estate, and farming.  As an independent woman, she was an anomaly, but seems to have found success in spite of her unusual path.

I enjoyed the realistic, informative historical setting of The Daughter's Walk, and loved the account of the walk itself.  The women's audacity in undertaking it, their resourcefulness and perseverance in completing it, and their boldness, speaking out for women, made for a great story.  But after that, with the family drama and  Clara's subsequent life and business ventures, the story either withered, or became a women's book.  I didn't enjoy the rest of the book as much; I don't think I was the target audience.

I am curious to know how much Kirkpatrick embellished the story, given the lack of historical record and the nature of Clara's story itself.  There is a non-fiction account of their walk, Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America, by Linda Lawrence Hunt.  Hunt also maintains a web site, http://www.boldspiritacrossamerica.com/index.html.  Also, in what must be a strange twist of publishing, Clara's great niece, Carole Estby Dagg, published her own fictionalization of Clara's life, The Year We Were Famous.  Dagg's book was released within a day of Kirkpatrick's.  Dagg also maintains a web site, http://www.caroleestbydagg.com/index.html.