The Daughter's Walk: A Novel [Paperback]

I decided to read The Daughter's Walk because it sounded like such an interesting story-two women walking across the country for a wager in the late nineteenth century. What a fascinating premise for a novel! The fact that this walk is an actual historical event makes it even more interesting. Of all the main characters in the novel, only three are completely fictional. Clara, her mother, her siblings, and the two female furriers who Clara goes to work for are all real people whose names have not been changed.

The novel spans forty years of Clara Estby's life from the time her mother first decided to walk across the country and take Clara along, to her mother's death decades later. Part one, which is almost half the length of the book, recounts in fictional detail the walk from Spokane to New York City. Part two, which spans most of the second half of the book imagines what Clara's time in exile from her family was like, and part three, which is just a few pages long, tells of how Clara made peace with the remaining members of her family over twenty years later.

The backdrop for the entire story is the early feminist movement, which began to gain widespread support in the late nineteenth century. Helga Estby was a suffragette, and although Clara begins her journey without any feminist inclinations, we soon find her embracing the independent lifestyle of a businessperson which was rarely pursued by women in those days.

Being a Christian novel, there is mention of God, but I feel that this is one of those books where God is tacked onto the story as an afterthought. Take God out of this story and you probably wouldn't miss Him much. Even more disappointingly, there is no satisfying spiritual resolution. Yes, Clara is reunited and forgiven by the remaining members of her family, but there is very little mention of God in all of this, and Clara's apparent distance from God during her familial exile is never satisfactorily resolved.

The value I found in this book comes from the fact that it is a true story. It's a fascinating piece of history which I enjoyed learning about and engaging in through fiction. The Daughter's Walk is very well-written and the characters are well-developed. The parts of the plot that were completely imagined (Clara's relationship with Franklin comes to mind) are believable and fit well within the broader context of the story. For this reason I think it was worth reading, though I did not find within the pages the soul food I was expecting.

I had my hesitations about this book when I ordered it but once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. It's a book that should on everybody's reading list. There is so much about Clara Estby and her mother's 3,500 miles trek to New York City from Spokane, Washington on foot to save their family farm and their family. The trek is only a part of the story.

When Clara and her mother return home, they are not happy. Nobody in the family is. A lot happened there while they went to save their farm. Upon their return home, nothing went as planned. I won't spoil the secrets that Clara learns along the way. This story is also about a mother and daughter relationship as well. The book is also about family and the immigrant family experience in the Victorian era. But the book is also about women like Clara and her mother and others who try to fight for equality.

The book is first rate reading material. You will not be disappointed by reading this book. It's just first rate and based on a true story. The author, Jane Kirkpatrick, does a first rate job in writing, researching, and delivering a classic book to readers everywhere. I can't speak enough of this book or read it fast enough.

If I would cast anybody, I would cast Amelia Heinle for the role of Clara Estby and Melissa Leo to play her mother in a film version. I could this story becoming a film classic of high quality.

I have been taken in by tales of cross-country races, like the "Bunion Derby" of 1928, as told in C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race, and the more recent Trans American foot race, as in David Horton's A Quest for Adventure. More recently, I followed Jeff Rudisill's walk across America, which he chronicled at [...]. 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.

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, [...]. 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, [...].

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