Diane Smith is a Montanan who writes about science and travel. That fits with the creation of this novel. The setting is Yellowstone National Park in 1898. The book, like many 19th century novels is told in letters the characters write. There are obvious limits to this format, but Smith handles them very well.
The modern hooks in the book are environmental and feminist politics.
The protagonist and primary letter writer is A. E. Bartram, a medical
student at Cornell University, a descendant of a famous botanist, and
an avocational botanist who had worked with the Lewis and Clark
Expedition's botanical collection.
Bartram applies to join a Smithsonian-sponsored botanical expedition.
Professor Merriam of the Montana Agricultural College at Bozeman
has secured limited support for an effort to begin cataloging the plant
life of "the nation's park," and Bartram's offer to join without salary
seems very opportune.
To Merriam's surprise and consternation, A. E. Bartram is Alexandra,
not Alexander and he is ill-prepared to deal with the presence of a
woman on his expedition in back-country Yellowstone.
The expedition arrives in the park at the same time as a delegation of businessmen and politicians
arrives to discuss "the virtues of capitalism" and the economic development of the park.
(Think about a dam on Yellowstone Canyon to generate electricity for a tourist railroad and, incidentally,
a mountain railroad to haul gold out of the mines near Cooke City.) The way Smith presents these
actual turn-of-the-century proposals, the political arguments sound very much like the ones floating
about the west today (listen carefully when Dick Cheney talks about the concerns of "the west.")
But there's also the intellectual dispute and the search for mutual understanding.
Miss Bartram, an eager student from the eastern U.S. is convinced of the importance and supremacy of
strictly scientific method and nomenclature. Professor Merriam is an advocate of popularizing science
(and the names of things like bitterroot, aka Lewisia rediviva) in order to win public support and understanding.
In more predictable (Hollywood) hands this would be a recipe for romantic comedy.
For Diane Smith it's a chance to explore different ways of knowing and
understanding. The presence of a Native American family on the expedition and
references to the conflicts between the botanists and the agriculturalists at the college
offer further dimensions to this theme.
The intellectual theme is well done, as is the rest of the book. It was especially enjoyable to read this
little gem between walks and drives around Yellowstone. I started looking at plants (the flowers I've
always seen) more carefully and marveling at the incredible variety in the park. That made me appreciate
the methodology developed by one of the book's characters.
If you're curious about the consistency of environmental politics from the 1890s to today;
if you'd like a take on gender politics of a century ago (one of the women in the book would obviously
have been a role model for Jo Ashmore, my Montana mother-in-law); if you would like another example
of how people come to understand and appreciate opposing points of view; or if you're curious about
how a novel can be told through a series of letters, pick up Letters from Yellowstone.
I really liked it. I don't think it's necessary to be in "The Park"; to enjoy it, but visiting Yellowstone
and the mountains is an added bonus. Go and take the book along. Or just take the book to your favorite
reading spot and pretend you're looking at geysers and elk and mountain canyons and, Epilobium angustifolium,
aka fireweed.
(A bit of trivia that adds a chapter to the consistency of environmental politics: in the 1940s,
Wyoming ranchers and Republican politicians in Congress fought to prevent the acceptance of a gift
of land from John D. Rockefeller and the expansion of Grand Teton National Park. Today, western cattlemen
and Republican politicians are fighting to stop the expansion of national monuments and wilderness areas.
Where have the political descendants of A. Lincoln and T. Roosevelt gone?)
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