I found this book because it's mentioned at the end of [b:The Daughter's Walk: A Novel|9602318|The Daughter's Walk A Novel|Jane Kirkpatrick|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1289505864s/9602318.jpg|14489445]. A Daughter's Walk is a novel based on a cross-country walk made by Helga & Clara Estby in 1896. Bold Spirit is a factual account of the walk, put together almost exclusively from newspaper accounts of the walk. Helga kept a diary as they walked, but her bag containing her money and her diary was stolen in New York City. Her family destroyed the letters she wrote them on her journey. Later in life, she started writing a memior, but after her death, her children burned it, wanting no reminders of what they saw as their mother's shame and betrayal.

This factual account is actually more heart-breaking than the novel, perhaps because everything is there in black and white with no invented dialogue or assumed motivations to get in the way.

I would recommend reading Bold Spirit before A Daughter's Walk, simply because A Daughter's Walk fills in blanks that you don't realize are even there until you read Bold Spirit. It's kind of like watching the movie before you read the book. Bold Spirit is the book and A Daughter's Walk is the "movie". ( )

In 1896, a 36-year-old Norwegian immigrant named Helga Estby set out with her 18-year-old daughter, Clara, to walk from Spokane, Washington, to New York City, in hopes of winning a $10,000 cash prize. She wanted to use the winnings to prevent foreclosure on the family’s Washington farm and to provide a more secure life for herself, her husband, and their eight children.

[Bold Spirit] is the story of that walk – of the culture that formed Estby, of the personal and national events that led to the family’s distress, of the changing roles of American women as the Victorian era waned, and of the societal norms that nearly resulted in the story disappearing from the pages of history.

It’s a huge, complex, and ultimately distressing story, and one that Hunt keeps firmly within the realm of scholarship, which is probably the book’s biggest flaw. Like Lauren Kessler’s [Stubborn Twig], which dealt with a Japanese-American family’s internment during World War II, Bold Spirit is essentially stripped of its inherent drama and keeps the reader firmly at arm’s length.

There’s still a lot to digest here, though it takes some reading between the lines. The story is worth knowing, and Hunt’s retelling simply cracks open the door. One hopes a writer who is as interested in the heart of this amazing woman as in the journey she made will revisit this rich and multi-faceted American tale. ( )

This was a totally fascinating story that would have scored higher in my book if the author had more information about Helga. The point of the book is that many women's stories have been intentionally buried by society. This leads to a book that tries to string you along to the next part of the story because there isn't enough of the story known to merit a book of this size, and pads out any empty space with rants about burying women's history. The format got old after a while. ( )

Ok biography, not much detail about the walk just info that could be found from newspaper accounts of the era. ( )

How can a story of a woman and her daughter walking across the country in 1897 nearly have been lost to history?
Author Linda Lawrence Hunt does an amazing job bringing this story to our awareness. There's heartbreak at almost every turn - not the least of which is that the letters and Helga Estby's autobiography telling of her adventures which would have been so fascinating were destroyed by her family who were ashamed of her for undertaking such an "unfeminine" adventure. The fact that Hunt manages to flesh out the story, including what led up to Helga's decision and the backdrop against which it unfolded, is a credit to her researching skills. ( )