The Diary of Mattie Spenser: A Novel

by Sandra Dallas

Book Overview

No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are off in a covered... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312187106
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.7" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

Another good Sandra Dallas book.

Love this author's books. Wonderful story set in rough times!

5 stars

I LOVED this book!!!!

A book I couldn't put down!

I love this author, have read several of her books. So far, I have liked this one the best. Written in diary form, which I didn't think I would like, but found it done so well. Keep me totally entertained from start to finish!

Great Book!

I just finished reading this book and really enjoyed it very much,was hard to put down,I would recommend it to anyone! I loved the characters a lot!

Excellent ~ A page turner will keep you up at night

I loved this book~ I would read this book to my husband as I was reading it at night.I don't usually read to my husband ~ I should ~ I've heard that is good for marriages ~ but, I did read parts of this book to my husband because the diary entries were so interesting, so funny, so realistic. My husband promises he won't trade me for a farm livestock... But, anyway this book is so good ~ its one of those books you cannot bear to put down. I have bought additional copies & given them to my sisters and friends as gifts. Read this book ~ it is an adventure story ~ very realistic ~ and very sad at times too. This book is as good as " These IS My Words " by Nancy Turner, also about a similar time period in American History ~ also a book I have not been able to put down. This book is the best Sandra Dallas has written.

A story with staying power.

It has been five years since I picked up this book in the library on a whim and the story has stayed with me ever since - so much so that I finally decided to look it up here and see what others had to say. It's certainly not great literature but there is something about Dallas's straight forward manner and story presentation that is compelling and very believable. I'm amazed that I can still remember most of the book. Mattie's attempt to make a go of life in the wilderness and all the obstacles - both emotional and physical - that she encounters are page turners. A few years later I discovered an even better book along the same lines: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.

An Author of Breath-taking Skill

Sandra Dallas can number me among her devoted fans. I haven't read anything yet from her that I haven't admired. And I delighted in THE DIARY OF MATTIE SPENSER; couldn't put it down.As always with a book by Ms. Dallas, she has researched thoroughly so that her readers can truly understand the time and the place in which she sets her story.MATTIE opens with the pioneers on the wagon train to what was then the Colorado Territory. Most of the story then unfolds on the prairie where this new bride and her husband settle. This was a place so isolated and so bleak that we now know it drove many women, and a few men, to madness. Certainly, we understand these hardships as we sit in our warm homes, reading under the light of a good lamp. But seeing the hardships spelled out, as Dallas does here, reminds us of the extent of the woes that these people endured, and the stoicism with which they accepted their realities. Indian attacks, isolation, no plumbing, heat, light, medicine, plus childbirth fever...well, we now have a lot for which to be thankful. And the distance that, as a population, we have moved in just a century is highlighted by this diary. Part of Dallas' skill is that she always inhabits her characters so perfectly, giving them their voices. Mattie, as Dallas writes her, is a woman of extraordinary virtues. Decent, educated, kind and capable, she accepts her bridegroom's choices and defines the old-fashioned concept of "helpmate."Like all of Ms. Dallas' novels, this story pivots on a terrible secret, the worst secret she has written to date. I must admit that I was upset with the outcome here, though I cannot see how the diary could have ended in any other way. Still, Mattie's decision is thought-provoking in terms of today's women, and it highlights how far women have come in terms of both our rights and our freedoms within society.I admired the concept of writing this story in the form of diary entries. Since Ms. Dallas apparently is a leading expert on Colorado frontier history, I cannot help wondering how much of MATTIE may be fact-based.Truth or fiction, it doesn't matter. THE DIARY OF MATTIE SPENSER is a wonderful book that will stay with its admirers for years after it first is read.