The Story

Our pal, the pragmatic Samantha Allen, has never been a gal for stuffing herself into a corset just to bob along with the latest hype. So when her family insists she take in the monstrous St. Louis World’s Exposition of 1904, she hardly knows what’s in store. Fair warning: she doesn’t go quiet. Samantha sees not only the grand pavilions, but the ironies—the guy pulling dark moves in the Corn Palace, the rushed ‘models’ of dim little village folk that might make you squirm. The book mostly tracks her through the grounds, solving the amateur mysteries perched around a peculiar missing valuable, watching a love triangle tee off with her own spin, and in the middle of it all she gets dead serious. She opens the eyes of some fair-headed people to how they see blacks, immigrants, women’s suffrage, and all the hoo-ha flamed by a brand spankin’ new, bigger world. And while those matters are gigantic as the Log Cabin Ore-stoan replica, the story all depends on Samantha’s lovely, cozy, down-to-Pineville soul.

Why You Should Read It

Marietta Holley wrote this over a century ago, and time flies more twisting than a pair of dooryard chickens! Quick and nimble as January icicles, Samantha’s voice ring fresh. She ain’t too fancy, and you will laugh out loud one paragraph before you blink three times when she says something truly, perfectly sharp about race and fancy nationalism. There’s a snapper feel when you crave summer afternoons with a light breeze. It isn’t always a novel plot-gymnastic, but man, will she make you coo when other women in 1904 hold this exact book in a shawl pocket with another kind a hankered reading. Her writing make justice language real close—thinking parts for open guts and gentle heart, not for all lecture hall snobs. Speaking on, it is also boisterous, nearly slapstick. It is wild about details about the Fair’s foods and crazy globes and what happens when you threaten a well-married chap for he show too tender an arm at the Ferris wheel station. Read this to get smarter without ever pickin’ up a manual. A clever, knowing rib-nudge that sure ages keen.

Final Verdict

Absolutely put this on your shelf if you applaud history told as delight. It is good company for those waiting for friendly, folksy fireside reading—or scanning something on a chill metro trip that spits zip and meaning quieter from yesteryear eyes. Wait for moments where feel-good and argument muddle along each other. For those who love Little Women’s Mary Pip-ish liveliness or long-nights mullong in the mind of Lake Wobegon’s deep. However wry from whole, it favors novices dig in period attitudes with none sore dust churning.

Do keep eyes for her eye me. Highly odd in the recent century vein, and wholly snug to an active dinner char on the present progress.