Lidie Newton Books in Order

Jane Smiley's Lidie Newton novels follow an independent young woman through the upheavals of the years before the American Civil War. Lidie is observant, practical and uneasy with the narrow future available to her at home in Quincy, Illinois. Her travels take her into places where questions of freedom are impossible to keep separate from everyday life. Marriage, work and the search for a place to belong all become part of her education.

The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton introduces her as Lidie Harkness, a young woman whose abilities don't fit her older sisters' expectations of a suitable wife. Meeting Thomas Newton offers a way out. Thomas is an abolitionist traveling west to help settle the Kansas Territory with people who want it to enter the Union as a free state. Their quick courtship sends Lidie into a new marriage and a landscape already divided by the struggle over slavery.

Kansas makes political belief a matter of daily survival.

The territory offers the promise of a new home, but it is also a place of intimidation and violence. Lidie must learn about her husband while learning how to live in unfamiliar conditions. Settlers' ideals meet the practical demands of making a household, and the arguments over the territory's future expose differences among people who appear to share a cause. The novel views this volatile setting through one woman's judgments and experiences, keeping national conflict close to the people who endure it.

The later novel, Lidie, takes her story across the Atlantic. Back in Quincy and struggling with a troubled past, Lidie becomes interested in her niece Annie's ambitions. Annie wants a career on the stage, and an opportunity to perform abroad gives both women a reason to leave. Lidie accompanies her because traveling alone would be dangerous for a young unmarried woman. Their arrival in Liverpool opens another set of possibilities, along with new expectations about the roles they should occupy.

In England, Annie pursues acting while Lidie becomes her lady's maid in the household of Annie's benefactor. That change in circumstances gives the continuing story a different setting without leaving behind its central questions. What does independence mean when a woman's opportunities depend on family, marriage or employment? How much can a new place change the life someone has brought with her? These are historical adventures with a thoughtful, personal narrator and attention to the work of living through unsettled times. Begin with The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, then continue with Lidie to follow her journey from the American frontier to England.