West to a Land of Plenty: The Diary of Teresa Angelino Viscardi

This is the story of Teresa and her family that move New Jersey to Idaho in 1883. In this day and age that wouldn't be a major problem, of course. You'd buy a house there, sell your house here, get a rental truck, load you furniture and stuff then drive out to Idaho and move in to your new house.

Back then, however, things were a totally different manner. You could forget about the rental truck; such things wouldn't exist for a good while yet. You could also forget going directly to Idaho; a train could take you part of the way, but the rest of the distance you would have to travel by covered wagon.

You'd end up having to walk miles and miles (not everyone and everything could fit into the wagon at one time), have to put up with the weather, put up with the possibility of being attacked by bandits or Indians, and have to put up with becoming ill and not having any of the medical advances that we do today.

This novel does a good job of showing what type of life these people led and the difficulties they had to face in making such a move. It also ties in various other things going on at the time such as what was happening to the Native Americans, the lack of law-and-order, and the effects of gold and silver-rushes on regular people.

It's also not a "happy-happy" type novel, either, as not everyone makes it to the end of the trail alive. The problems and dangers they faced were very real and sometimes people just didn't live through the experience.

As always, there is also a good historical section, making this another really good book to read in the series.

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