Brief description:
From the book cover of a 1982 reprint:
Immediately after graduation from West Point in 1867, Orsemus B. Boyd married Frances Anne Mullen, a woman who would prove his equal in stamina and courage for eighteen years of army life in the West. She accompanied him on bruising and treacherous journeys across the Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert to live in some of the most remote outposts the army saw fit to garrison: Camp Halleck in Nevada; Camp Date Creek in Arizona; Fort Stanton, Fort Union, and Fort Bayard in New Mexico; and Fort Clark in Texas. Her home in
Nevada was a two-room tent with a barley sack carpet. The better part of social lire in Fort Clark was the exchange of grievances.
Intensely proud of her husband, Mrs. Boyd endured much for his sake: severe heat and cold, drudgery, a poor and monotonous diet, frustration, disappointment, malaria, and filth. By the time she reached Texas she had become so accustomed to making much out of little that she could prepare custards and other dainties in a tent stove. Her depictions of army life, of the landscapes of the Southwest, and of rough western travel are exceptional, hut no less so is her portrait of herself as the steadfastly" loyal wife of an unjustly dishonored officer. Her rage and bitterness at their treatment by the army were gradually tempered by her affection and respect for other army wives, her own sense of duty, and her deep love for the sky, land, and rivers of the Southwest.
Immediately after graduation from West Point in 1867, Orsemus B. Boyd married Frances Anne Mullen, a woman who would prove his equal in stamina and courage for eighteen years of army life in the West. She accompanied him on bruising and treacherous journeys across the Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert to live in some of the most remote outposts the army saw fit to garrison: Camp Halleck in Nevada; Camp Date Creek in Arizona; Fort Stanton, Fort Union, and Fort Bayard in New Mexico; and Fort Clark in Texas. Her home in
Nevada was a two-room tent with a barley sack carpet. The better part of social lire in Fort Clark was the exchange of grievances.
Intensely proud of her husband, Mrs. Boyd endured much for his sake: severe heat and cold, drudgery, a poor and monotonous diet, frustration, disappointment, malaria, and filth. By the time she reached Texas she had become so accustomed to making much out of little that she could prepare custards and other dainties in a tent stove. Her depictions of army life, of the landscapes of the Southwest, and of rough western travel are exceptional, hut no less so is her portrait of herself as the steadfastly" loyal wife of an unjustly dishonored officer. Her rage and bitterness at their treatment by the army were gradually tempered by her affection and respect for other army wives, her own sense of duty, and her deep love for the sky, land, and rivers of the Southwest.
Publication
J. Selwin Tait & Sons
New York