“I am in total awe of my great-grandmother’s courage,” says Durham writer Frances Wood, “In 1887 when the only women who went west were schoolteachers, the wives of missionaries, and ‘bad’ girls, my Great-grandmother Jennie became a Harvey Girl.”
It was partly Wood’s awe that led her to write her newest historical fiction, When Molly Was a Harvey Girl (Kane Miller, ages 9-12) and invent a young heroine with her great-grandmother’s spirit. Molly, Wood’s heroine, is facing a lot of adjustments. She’s just turned thirteen and is coping with maturational changes when her father dies leaving Molly and her older sister, Colleen, penniless. Colleen, desperate for a solution finds an ad soliciting eighteen to thirty year-old-women who are attractive, intelligent and of good character to become Harvey Girls. Colleen pins up Molly’s hair, remakes an old dress of their mama’s and they two are off to Chicago to join a crew of young women hired to work in a chain of new restaurants opened by Fred Harvey. It would be strange enough for the sisters to move to Chicago from their small town of Streator, IL, but they don’t land there. Chicago might be an adventure, but Raton, New Mexico seems like another world and Molly has no clue as to the hardships and adventures that await her.
Molly resembles Wood’s great-grandmother, Jenny in that she “had probably never been more than a few miles from home. She wasn’t a rich girl, she would never have even gone to Chicago. So to just pick up and leave, with the understanding that she might never see her family and home again, is pretty amazing. It must have been an enormous leap of faith.”
Like Wood’s previous two historical fiction novels, this book, has an intriguing setting—Becoming Rosemary was set in 1790’s North Carolina and Daughter of Madrugada takes place on a Mexican ranch located in California right after the 1848 war. Each of her books are rich in setting and the authenticity. This is partially built of months of careful research, for Wood was once a research librarian. “I spend months to years researching,” Wood says, “When I can, I go back to primary sources. I am fortunate that I live near to and have access to two great university libraries – Duke’s and UNC’s. When I’m deep into a book I sort of exist in two centuries at a time. It drives my husband crazy.”
But it’s always Wood’s characters that come first. “When I write an historical novel, I begin with a character and then research the time in which she would have lived. The more I learn, the more her life fills out for me. I sometimes fall in love with my research and have to step back from the loved fact and sternly remind myself that I am only learning about Molly’s world – I am letting her create it.”
Not only setting and character drive Wood’s newest book, but also adventure. Molly faces a lifestyle change, hides her age, take on the rigors of long hours and hard physical labor, not to mention a train wreck, dreadful snow storm and a train robber lurking in the background. Molly has to find her way to understanding confusing prejudices against Mexican and Indians and determining the duplicity of a seemingly eligible batchelor she courts in her sister’s stead.
There is a good bit of duplicity and double standards in this book, themes Wood sees as a part of any coming of age. “Isn’t that what life is all about? You have to turn corners, go into dead-end alleys, fight back to where you started from, and set out again. Duplicity and division are as much part of our lives as sunshine and rain..