Katharine's Remarkable Road Trip, by Gail Ward Olmsted, JUN2024 LTER
Talk Reviews of Early Reviewers Books
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1LyndaInOregon
Overall, this is a pleasant enough book about a physical journey made by a remarkable woman near the end of her life. It is also about a mental journey through her past, and about her determination to leave a life without loose ends, without regrets, and without certain truths left unspoken.
Katharine Prescott Wormeley was an extraordinary woman whose accomplishments included serving as a volunteer nurse during America’s Civil War, and later working as a hospital administrator, educator, author, translator, and philanthropist, all at a time when professional opportunities for young women were severely restricted. Author Gail Ward Olmsted here presents a fictionalized version of the surprising road trip taken by Wormeley near the end of her life, as she drove solo from Newport, Rhode Island to Jackson, New Hampshire in the fall of 1907.
After receiving grim news from her physician, Wormeley determines to relocate to her beloved summer home in New Hampshire for the remainder of her life. This involves a journey of 270 miles along roads generally unpaved, unmarked, and frequently unshared, in an early motor vehicle whose operation required new skills and demanded physical abilities that kept most women firmly ensconced in the passenger seat. Along the way, Wormeley – a happily single 77-year-old – receives a marriage proposal, meets a Civil War veteran with a surprising connection to her past, confronts the widow of the man she called one of the great loves of her life, provides lifesaving first aid to not just one but two complete strangers, hands out marital advice to a harried young mother, urges political action on a trio of would-be suffragettes, chats about the motion picture business with a young Louis B. Mayer, and finally achieves a kind of closure with the second – and also unobtainable -- man she has loved for years.
That’s quite a lot of emotional territory to cover in just one week, and Olmsted keeps the pace moving briskly while still allowing her character to recall key incidents from her life as well as to provide a running commentary on the scenery, the towns through which she passes, and detailed descriptions of the meals she enjoys.
It’s a remarkable journey, indeed, but it is also a book sadly flawed by so many anachronisms that the reader at times is in danger of sustaining whiplash.
The first – and one of the most egregious – is the notation that as Wormeley prepares to leave her Rhode Island home, she unplugs the icebox. This is 1907, remember, when virtually no private homes outside of Manhattan had electrical service at all. And, in any case, an ice box is just that – a box in which one puts a block of ice to keep food cold. It does not require electricity.
Nearly as stunning is Wormeley’s recollection of a conversation with a nursing comrade during the Civil War, who refers to “flying by the seat of our pants” – an idiom which would not come into the language until the era of powered flight, still 40-some years in the future.
There are at least half a dozen more such bumbles, any one of which should have been caught by the author, had she made even the most superficial study of the era. At one point, Wormeley folds up a highway map and stows it in the car’s glove box – a neat trick, since neither item existed at the time. She spots a North Carolina license place on a car three years before that state begins issuing them. She has lunch with a young woman with bobbed hair – a coiffure which will debut in France, three years down the road. During her encounter with Louis B. Mayer, the future mogul refers several times to “movies” at a time when the infant art form was still known only as moving pictures.
And, adding insult to injury, the book’s cover illustration clearly shows an elderly lady tootling down the road in a generic Model A era roadster, 25 years before such cars were produced.
Mixing historical fact and fiction is always a difficult feat, and the very least that should be expected from an author attempting it is that they have a firm grasp on the reality of the era in which it is set. Unfortunately, that’s not happening here, and it severely damages what might otherwise be an engaging tale.
Katharine Prescott Wormeley was an extraordinary woman whose accomplishments included serving as a volunteer nurse during America’s Civil War, and later working as a hospital administrator, educator, author, translator, and philanthropist, all at a time when professional opportunities for young women were severely restricted. Author Gail Ward Olmsted here presents a fictionalized version of the surprising road trip taken by Wormeley near the end of her life, as she drove solo from Newport, Rhode Island to Jackson, New Hampshire in the fall of 1907.
After receiving grim news from her physician, Wormeley determines to relocate to her beloved summer home in New Hampshire for the remainder of her life. This involves a journey of 270 miles along roads generally unpaved, unmarked, and frequently unshared, in an early motor vehicle whose operation required new skills and demanded physical abilities that kept most women firmly ensconced in the passenger seat. Along the way, Wormeley – a happily single 77-year-old – receives a marriage proposal, meets a Civil War veteran with a surprising connection to her past, confronts the widow of the man she called one of the great loves of her life, provides lifesaving first aid to not just one but two complete strangers, hands out marital advice to a harried young mother, urges political action on a trio of would-be suffragettes, chats about the motion picture business with a young Louis B. Mayer, and finally achieves a kind of closure with the second – and also unobtainable -- man she has loved for years.
That’s quite a lot of emotional territory to cover in just one week, and Olmsted keeps the pace moving briskly while still allowing her character to recall key incidents from her life as well as to provide a running commentary on the scenery, the towns through which she passes, and detailed descriptions of the meals she enjoys.
It’s a remarkable journey, indeed, but it is also a book sadly flawed by so many anachronisms that the reader at times is in danger of sustaining whiplash.
The first – and one of the most egregious – is the notation that as Wormeley prepares to leave her Rhode Island home, she unplugs the icebox. This is 1907, remember, when virtually no private homes outside of Manhattan had electrical service at all. And, in any case, an ice box is just that – a box in which one puts a block of ice to keep food cold. It does not require electricity.
Nearly as stunning is Wormeley’s recollection of a conversation with a nursing comrade during the Civil War, who refers to “flying by the seat of our pants” – an idiom which would not come into the language until the era of powered flight, still 40-some years in the future.
There are at least half a dozen more such bumbles, any one of which should have been caught by the author, had she made even the most superficial study of the era. At one point, Wormeley folds up a highway map and stows it in the car’s glove box – a neat trick, since neither item existed at the time. She spots a North Carolina license place on a car three years before that state begins issuing them. She has lunch with a young woman with bobbed hair – a coiffure which will debut in France, three years down the road. During her encounter with Louis B. Mayer, the future mogul refers several times to “movies” at a time when the infant art form was still known only as moving pictures.
And, adding insult to injury, the book’s cover illustration clearly shows an elderly lady tootling down the road in a generic Model A era roadster, 25 years before such cars were produced.
Mixing historical fact and fiction is always a difficult feat, and the very least that should be expected from an author attempting it is that they have a firm grasp on the reality of the era in which it is set. Unfortunately, that’s not happening here, and it severely damages what might otherwise be an engaging tale.
