Professional critiques, awards, and reviews for Emigrant Tales of the Platte River Raids (M Press, 2023).
From WyoHistory.org
A Project of the Wyoming Historical Society
MARCH 27, 2024 (View the complete review here.)
ON THE TRAILS IN A DANGEROUS YEAR
The award-winning author/historian is a great-granddaughter of James and Sarah Rousseau, who traveled in 1864 with the Pella Company on the Oregon Trail on the south bank of the North Platte River through what’s now Wyoming. That was a particularly bloody year on the trails. The Civil War drew nearly all the Army’s attention and troops to the East, yet emigrants continued flooding west, many of them to escape the war. And the tribes resisted.
Emigrant Tales of the Platte River Raids gives background and context for the accounts of nearly 70 diarists who traveled the trails that year. These introductions, fully sourced, include a detailed roster of all the families plus a narrative of events occurring as they travel.
The accounts include maps, sketches, mileage and destination lists, quotations from various diaries and copious information about assorted stopping points. Not all the diary entries are directly about raids; some include information about military involvement and effort to safeguard the emigrants. An appendix of newspaper articles, letters and oral histories adds to the book’s already plentiful sources.
Kylie L. McCormick’s excellent Foreword provides extensive historical background to the events chronicled in the book.
The curious reader can open the volume to almost any page and find something interesting. Hence, this first-rate work of history need not be read front-to-back.
Marion County Genealogical Society
(April 2024)
From Arizona Author’s Association
(March 24, 2024)
Emigrant Tales of the Platte River Raids contains thorough and scrupulous research, and an abundance of proper citations and notes. It is a treasure for anyone interested in this subject, or even the wider subject of the general history of the West. …You get a feel for being “in the action.” … The actual quotes from historical records give a good feel to the overall book and allow the reader a glimpse into the personalities of the figures, such as the deep animosity of the Howard and Missouri train passengers toward the Browns and others. The dynamics feel right; I liked the details about Fort Laramie soldiers being more interested in general “bedlam” than they are in actually watching out for the emigrants.
While the author gives a sympathetic viewpoint to the Native Americans’ plight, the personalities of the two sides might be further explored. This is in no way a criticism. …I’m awed by the amount of research and the stories already contained within.
…To any historian, the book would satisfy their appetite for the Platte River Raids and provide a “go to” resource for anything related to those months in 1864 (and also much more than those months, as background).
~Kathleen Cook for Arizona Authors Association
From the Western Association of Women Historians
(March 18, 2024)
We enjoyed reading and discussing your book which made important breakthroughs in scholarship!
~Erika Edwards for WAWH
From IndieReader
(Feb. 23, 2024)
EMIGRANT TALES OF THE PLATTE RIVER RAIDS is a sprawling, unapologetically comprehensive book. In July 1864, as the steady stream of European settlers made their way west via the Oregon Trail and others, Northern Plains Indians began to systematically attack their wagon trains. Author Janelle Molony succeeds in creating a compendium of surviving accounts of this frequently overlooked event in American history.
The book began life as an offshoot of author Janelle Molony’s own family history research. Indeed, amateur genealogists and family historians are obviously the principal target audience. The blurb includes a list of last names featured in the book to appeal to precisely this constituency. Many of the stories and anecdotes included here aren’t especially noteworthy in and of themselves; they only really acquire resonance for those descended from the participants. Molony also acutely feels the inherent narrative imbalance of the work and is quick to acknowledge that her account has nothing to say about the experiences of those Northern Plains Indians who took part in the raids. This admission about the deficiencies of genealogical material and family narratives can be hard to find.
The book also benefits from a short but even-handed and informative foreword from Wyoming historian Kylie Louise McCormick, who correctly points out the one-sided and contemptuous treatment Indians received at the hands of settlers and soldiers alike. Molony is likewise aware of the fact that settlers were, after all, encroaching on territory that was already settled, and avoids using such loaded terms as “massacre” to describe the attacks that resulted.
Molony’s obvious intent to leave the entire fruits of research—the book is over 500 pages long—leads to a certain glut of information, and at times the main text has the feel of a prosopography.* Molony groups the settlers by the trains they traveled in, and is careful to note family relationships and occupations of those who traveled, but also such minutiae as the medical ailments they suffered from, the animals they brought with them, and so forth. In so doing, the lede gets buried at times; though one might well respond that to expect a cohesive, flowing narrative from a book that is first and foremost a historical resource is to miss the point.
*A prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Where biographies study the entire personality of individuals (external and inner features), prosopographies emphasize the external similarities and differences between individuals within a given population.
It is in the nature of the material that there are more than a few tidbits of information that are tantalizingly incomplete. It would, for example, have been fascinating to know more about Andy Lawrence: a former slave who had been emancipated by the Cherokee and, with his father, joined the Kelly-Larimer train as a hired help—only to see his father killed by Indians during a raid on July 12, 1864. After heading back east to join the Union Army, he became a mason, and apparently left no records. Many other individuals emerge briefly from the mass of mundane details at moments of high drama—only to disappear again once the danger has passed, either into the obscurity of the trail or a shallow grave. Molony is alert to familial sensibilities, and treats reports of deaths with appropriate solemnity. The only misstep is the peculiar decision to render the accounts in the present tense, which jars after a while. It is, however, a small complaint. Those interested in trail history will find much here of interest and usefulness.
EMIGRANT TALES OF THE PLATTE RIVER RAIDS sees author Janelle Molony compile a thorough, blow-by-blow account of a largely forgotten aspect of nineteenth-century trail history.
Book Summary
EMIGRANT TALES OF THE PLATTE RIVER RAIDS by Janelle Molony focuses on painting the harrowing personal experiences of emigrants traveling through the Northern plains in 1864 during the Civil War. The author has compiled this book with the help of various historical sources, such as eyewitness testimonies, diary entries, and handwritten letters, further explained through helpful annotations, explanations and pictures. The book immerses the readers within its world, through emotionally charged language showcasing the courage of those who faced the raids. Readers who enjoy authentic historical reporting will love this book.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader
From Readers’ Favorite
(Jan. 3, 2024)
Emigrant Tales of the Platte River Raids: An 1864 Trail Diary Companion is a work of non-fiction in the historical writing, military, and sociocultural subgenres. It is best suited to the general adult reading audience. Penned by author Janelle Molony, this atmospheric and creative non-fiction work vividly captures the untold stories of the Platte River Raids in 1864, a tumultuous chapter in the American West overshadowed by the Civil War. The author delves into the harrowing experiences of emigrants traveling through the Northern Plains, where unexpected attacks by Plains Indians disrupted their journeys on the Bozeman, Oregon, and Overland Trails.
Author Janelle Molony has crafted an in-depth yet highly readable work that adeptly compiles eyewitness accounts from nearly 70 survivors, offering a mosaic of perspectives from all sorts of people from different walks of life at the time. The well-arranged and well-curated testimonies – and the brilliant choice to have them vetted by living descendants – provide a rich and immersive exploration of a largely overlooked historical event whilst also connecting the past to the present in a relevant way that sparks emotion.
Reading this book is like stepping into a time machine, witnessing the fear, resilience, and unity of those who faced the Platte River Raids, with all the atmospheric charm of a novel, but the emotional impetus of true and living history that still impacts us today. Molony’s dedication to presenting these stories in a comprehensive and annotated manner elevates this work, contributing significantly to the literary history of the American West. Overall, I would not hesitate to recommend Emigrant Tales of the Platte River Raids for fans of historical non-fiction everywhere.
–– K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite
Book launch ranking on Amazon!
(Dec. 27, 2023)
More to come soon!
What’s next?
- Leave your own review on Amazon (here) or GoodReads (here).
- Order The 1864 Diary of Mrs. Sarah Rousseau, one of the original trail diaries.
- Book Author and Historian, Janelle Molony, for a speaking engagement.
- Follow on Social Media. FB: @AuthorJanelleMolony IG: @AuthorJanelleMolony