Prospects of a Woman by Wendy Voorsanger

Author:Wendy Voorsanger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

24

August 1851

My Dearest Friend Louisa May,

I write once again, begging you, please don’t be sore at my contrary opinions about your father. I only meant to say I admired his efforts at experimental thinking, even as I understand his meager financial contributions cause you great discomfort. Perhaps I find myself jealous, as you enjoy a family, whole and together and in one place, even as the proximity strangles your sensibilities. Please forgive me and write to me soon, as I am in great need of your friendship, evermore now, as our little family on the Goodwin river claim has broken up. Álvaro has moved back to Spain, bestowing riches upon his family, with pride. His leaving feels as if the hardened scab of pain over losing Lucy has been ripped open, my insides oozing out messy. I miss the sound of beauty coming from his guitar, my world now filled with bleak silence in its place, deafening me in the void of his favor. I’ve no choice but to bind myself back up, wrap the festering loss under a bandage of courageous living. After all, it’s not as if he’s dead.

I value the importance of your friendship immeasurably, and am eternally grateful for the letters you have written, especially the last one with your Flower Fables, written as Flora Fairfield. You must know the ending poem from your Frost King fable lifts me up, with two lines in particular enlightening my spirit beyond measure. “Thus by Violet’s magic power, All dark shadows passed away . . .” If only I possessed half the magic of Violet, or had help from those clever little fairies. Although I do appreciate your faith in me, and am bathed in the wonder of the glorious world you’ve created with trees and flowers and birds and joy. It reminds me to love my haven here, in all its wild unpredictability. No doubt, Flower Fables gives little Ellen Emerson a great joy knowing you wrote them specifically for her. Surely, the sweet girl is yet of an age to understand the true importance of literature in a woman’s life. Dare I say, it is the life force that keeps us moving forward, blotting out our troubles with soothing words of imagination.

I think often of your troubles going out to service. It must’ve been simply dreadful, and paid only four dollars working yourself to the quick for the hardly honorable James Richardson! Obviously, the promise of employment as his poor sister’s companion showed itself as a terrible ruse to harass your womanliness. Count yourself fortunate you had the wherewithal to escape without blackening the man’s boots. I fear what might’ve befallen you succumbing to such humiliation. You must now reflect upon the whole horrible experience as a trove of material from which to write. Fodder for Flora, as one might say.

As for our situation, we’ve built a bookshop up in Coyoteville, named Split Rock Books and Prints, after my favorite spot along the American River. It will

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