In the wake of the Civil War, land seekers were pouring into the West and displacing the Indian tribes. Although Omaha was beginning to put on social airs, Nebraska was still a raw territory.Not one to take shelter and spend her days sewing and serving tea, Linnie traveled up the Missouri to deliver a "Dear John" message to her cousin's fiancé, a handsome lieutenant--and in a wink became the wife of this stranger. They came to love and trust each other, and their survival on the frontier required nothing less, and a good deal more, from them than that. Their harrowing story is based on the diary of an actual army wife who recorded the daily weather-internal and external.The Lieutenant's Lady, which appeared on best-seller lists in 1942, is part of a series of stories and novels by Bess Streeter Aldrich to be reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press.

    New Preface by the Author; Index.

    We sat shoulder to shoulder at a little bar in the east Fifties. We ate dinner together, saw a Broadway show together, shared a cab together.The bartender, the waiter, the usher, the cab driver—none of them remembers you. The police say I was home strangling my wife at the moment I met you.You are the only one who can prove my story—but I don't know your name, or where you live. And I can't search for you from a jail cell....

    Against this historical background is told the story of the Murrays and their neighbors, of Violet the daughter, who suddenly realized that she was in love with her foster brother, Hugh, and of how Hugh felt he must play a man's part before he declared his love for her. Authentic pictures of frontier life, of the crudeness of the houses and the furnishings, of the superstitions, old wives tales, religious quirks, and of the essential faith in liberty and democracy. Good substantial historical fiction, by author of The Rolling Years.