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Summary
Summary
Winner of the 2017 Reading the West Award
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"This gorgeously written historical novel follows Dulcy, a young woman in 1904 who attempts to flee her late father's business problems―and her violent ex-fiance's grasp―by traveling west and posing as a wealthy widow." ― Entertainment Weekly
Dulcy Remfrey has traveled the globe with her eccentric father, Walton, a wealthy entrepreneur obsessed with earthquakes and catastrophe, searching to cure his long battle with syphilis through any crackpot means necessary. Their deep connection is tested, however, when Walton returns from an African expedition without any of the proceeds from the sale of his gold mine. It seems he's lost his mind along with the great sum of money, his health declining rapidly. Her father's business partner (and her ex-fiancé) insists Dulcy come to Seattle to decipher her father's cryptic notebooks--a dozen in all, wrapped in brightly colored silk--which may hold clues to the missing funds. Yet when her father dies before they can locate the money, Dulcy falls under suspicion. Petrified of being forced to spend the rest of her life with her ex-love, Dulcy decides to disappear from the train bringing her father's body home.
Is it possible to disappear from your old life and create another? Dulcy travels the West reading stories about her presumed death and settles into a small Montana town where she is reborn as Mrs. Nash, a wealthy young widow with no burden of family. But her old life won't let go so easily, and soon her ex-fiancé is on her trail, threatening the new life she is so eager to create.
The Widow Nash is a riveting narrative, filled with a colorful cast of characters, rich historical details, and epic set pieces. Europe in summer. New York in fall. Africa in winter. The lively, unforgettable town of Livingston, Montana. And in Dulcy, Jamie Harrison has created an indelible heroine sure to capture the hearts of readers everywhere.
"Sweeping and richly hued . . . features a character set loose to wander the American West at the turn of the 20th century, a woman whose early experiences seem drawn from the worldly peregrinations of the era of Henry James . . . Harrison has rendered her imagined world anachronistically, but Henry James might still have approved." ― The New York Times Book Review
Author Notes
Jamie Harrison , who has lived in Montana with her family for more than thirty years, has worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor, and is the author of The Center of Everything , The Widow Nash , and the four Jules Clement/Blue Deer mysteries: The Edge of the Crazies , Going Local , An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence , and Blue Deer Thaw . She was awarded the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award for The Widow Nash , and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Debut novelist Harrison paints a lovely and memorable portrait of a desperate woman's flight to a new life. In late 1904, Leda Cordelia Dulcinea Remfrey has been summoned to Seattle to attend to her dying syphilitic father, Walton. Dulcy must go, even though the summons comes from her father's business partner and her ex-fiancé, Victor Maslingen, a man of violent rages who raped her. She is Victor's only hope to find out what the increasingly deranged Walton has done with the profits of the sale of some African mines, money that Victor needs. After Walton's death, as Dulcy and her sister, Carrie, travel back East to bury their father, Dulcy makes her way from the train to begin a new life in Livingston, Mont., as the Widow Maria Nash. Livingston is not without its own violence and drama, but it promises the safety of anonymity and possibly even real love. Harrison's lead is a strong and clever woman who is easy to admire, while the rest of the heroes, villains, and ambiguous sorts are as vividly drawn as the raw and terrible scenery of Montana. Readers will treasure Harrison's rich characterization and sharp turns of phrase. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Dulcy Remfrey has spent most of her life as a companion to her father, Walton, a syphilitic globe-trotter prone to indulging in women and financial speculation. When his illness hits its final downward spiral, Walton has just returned from a trip without Dulcy during which a million-dollar profit has vanished along with his mind. After his death, Dulcy cannot trace the money, despite threats from her ex-fiancé, her father's partner. On impulse, she stages her suicide and disappears into a new life in small-town Montana, where she reinvents herself as the widow Nash. Harrison, author of the Jules Clement Montana-set mystery series, writes atmospheric historical fiction featuring both drama and bizarrely entertaining humor. There are Whartonesque touches in the demarcations of society, though the humor is of a decidedly more oddball and at times raunchy nature that pulls no punches. This amalgam of varied parts works, providing both the overarching story of a woman divorcing herself from her past and a subtler comedy of errors among a quirky cast of characters.--Shaw, Stacy Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
This novel from the daughter of Jim Harrison features a character set loose to wander the American West at the turn of the 20th century, a woman whose early experiences seem drawn from the worldly peregrinations of the era of Henry James. Sweeping and richly hued, "The Widow Nash" follows the adventures of Walton Remfrey, genius engineer, Shakespeare-quoting inventor and mine investor, and his daughter, Leda Cordelia Dulcinea, known throughout as Dulcy, who has served as his traveling companion since she was 15. Father and daughter track earthquakes around the world, his obsession. But Dad has another earthshaking passion - chasing every skirt he sees. Suffering from tertiary syphilis, he nevertheless becomes a male Typhoid Mary of the disease, infecting multitudes, leaving little spirochetes of death in his wake. Dulcy comes to dread the "suctioning sound of bodies on bad mattresses" that emanates from her patriarch's next-door hotel room. She forgives him; she loves him. "He'd opened the wide world for her," Harrison writes, "but sluiced away her joy." The plot is constructed as a treasure tale. In 1904, as the novel begins, Dulcy's bacillus-addled father leaps out of a Seattle hotel window, leaving behind a mystery as to the whereabouts of a large, recently won fortune. It is up to his 24-year-old daughter to deduce the truth, combing for clues through her father's mysterious silk-covered notebooks: "The Red Book of Disaster," "The Deep Yellow Book of Cures" and so on. Soon, though, she's on the run from a brutal ex-fiancé, Walton's business partner, Victor Maslingen, who thinks she may have tucked away the millions in question. As the father was distinguished by his adventurousness, so too is his daughter. In flight from Victor, she adopts a new persona, the widow Nash. Press reports declare that Dulcy is dead, a suicide like her father. In fact, she flourishes, making her base the Elite Hotel in Livingston, Mont. There Dulcy joins the genteel Sacajawea Club, takes a writer-lover with "chocolaty hair," plants an ambitious garden and reinvents herself in the familiarly modern way. Harrison has rendered her imagined world anachronistically, but Henry James might still have approved. JEAN ZIMMERMAN'S most recent novel is "Savage Girl."
Kirkus Review
A literary turn from an author known for mysteries (Blue Deer Thaw, 2000, etc.).Dulcy Remfrey is returning from a party when she gets a phone call. Phone calls aren't exactly common in 1904, so she assumes the worst: her father's dead. As it happens, he's not, but neither is he well, and it seems that he has misplaced a very large sum of money. His business partner, Victoralso, once upon a time, Dulcy's fiancewants her to leave New York immediately and head for Seattle, hopeful that she might tease the truth of the missing fortune from her father's syphilis-addled brain. Victor, a man with violent tendencies, is dismayed both by the prospect of being ruinedWalton was supposed to be returning from Africa with the proceeds from selling several minesand the presence of the woman who jilted him. When Walton dies before anyone can figure out what's happened to Victor's money, Dulcy decides that her only option is to disappear. Thus, Dulcy Remfrey turns herself into the young widow Mrs. Nash. This baroque setup is nicely balanced by Harrison's prose; the narrative voice here is restrained, with just a hint of quiet irony. And there's the fact that, as fantastical as the scenario might seem, Walton Remfrey is an entirely believable Gilded Age figure: a mining magnate who got his start digging copper as an orphan in Cornwall, a lowborn man who built an empire with hard labor, constant hustle, and a lack of regard for ethics. He's a raconteur and a libertine as much as he is an engineer and entrepreneur. Indeed, how readers react to this novel depends in large part on how beguiling they find Walton. While this is ostensibly Dulcy's tale, she is trapped in a Seattle apartment with her dying fathernot to mention the volatile Victorfor almost a third of the book, and, even after he dies, the story of her reinvention is, again and again, interrupted by vignettes from her travels with her father. Some readers will enjoy these picaresque episodes, while those who require narrative momentum will likely find them distracting. Thoughtful, richly written historical fiction. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
For years, Dulcy Remfrey accompanied her father, Walton, on worldwide trips as he invested in mines and sought treatments for his syphilis. But in 1904, when Walton returns from an African expedition, his mind gone, Victor Maslingen, his business partner and Dulcy's ex-fiancé, summons her to Seattle. He's convinced that Dulcy can decipher Walton's cryptic notebooks to learn what happened to profits from a gold mine, but pages with dates and victim statistics from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, odd scientific theories, and bawdy poetry yield no answers. After her father's death, Dulcy disappears during a train journey taking his body back East. Leaving behind clues suggesting she committed suicide in order to escape Victor's marriage plans, Dulcy reinvents herself as a wealthy widow in a remote Montana town But she discovers that the residents of Livingston have their own dark secrets and that her past may catch up with her. Is the train passenger who arrives in town Victor's spy or Dulcy's chance for happiness? Multiple characters swirl through the novel, rushing from crisis to crisis. Verdict Readers prizing action above all may appreciate this Western saga by the daughter of author Jim Harrison (who also pens the "Blue Deer" mysteries), but those bothered by loose ends and minimal character development will be -disappointed-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Mankato © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
CHAPTER 1 ALMOST ALL SOULS' DAY People paid attention when they arrived because Carrie was beautiful and Dulcy had jilted a rich man. Dulcy hadn't been to the city since, and once she had a glass in her hand, she found she enjoyed the spiky, expectant whispers, the open curiosity. They wore black dresses and masks, because they were in mourning for Martha, but most of the other women were pretending to be Marie Antoinette or Cinderella, and the dust from their powdered hair dropped like dandruff. Dulcy studied the men, skimming over the earnest costumes--kings and knights--for odder types like headhunters, sheiks, and Vikings, but as she often did, she found she liked the idea of people more than the reality. An insurance man at her elbow put aside his bullfighter's cape and cap and began talking about oysters-- their different shapes, their increasing rarity--and for a little while his obsession, his sliver of strangeness, was interesting. But he didn't bear long study; he dissolved like a bad mint. "I met your father once, at my club," he said. "A genius, but such a character. A little all over the place. I gather you are always in the process of traveling." The insurance man came from a good family, with bundles of money, but his eyes were evasive, and she could see him work through his memory, try to suss out stories of the lost engagement. As he thought, he pursed his lips and moved them in and out. All around them, Carrie's friends were playing divination games, courtship games: people were supposed to drip candle wax in finger bowls, blow out lines of candles and count the years they'd stay unwed, throw peels over a shoulder and guess what letter they formed, and bob for apples. There was no one in this room Dulcy felt like bobbing for, and probably no one who wanted to bob for her, but she allowed herself to be herded toward a dangling, tarnished hand mirror, to look behind her reflection for the man she would marry. For Carrie, who'd left a trail of peels every Halloween since she was three, the man in the mirror was peachfaced, hovering Alfred Lorrimer, who seemed to expand with wine and her attention that night, not so much opening like a flower as swelling like a sponge. Dulcy stood obediently in line and opened her eyes on cue: she saw her face and a black curtain, and felt a train move below them, not a sound but a shudder. "Of course it was black," Carrie hissed in her ear, pointing to the drapery that faced the mirror. "I want you to have fun. Can't you just do that for a bit?" A line of handsome, placid-faced men in silly costumes, waiting to be picked, found this amusing. "All right," said Dulcy, finishing a second glass. "How do you say yes in Halloween?" "As if it were a language?" asked one man. "As if it were a language," she said. The whole strange city vibrating around her, and here she was in a puddle of normal. "We give up," they said. "Oui," she said. "And ja." "Hohoho," said the bullfighter. And: "Let me fetch another glass for you." When he headed off, as Dulcy slid toward the door, she could hear Carrie pipe away: her sister had spent years with their difficult father, months at the farm in Westfield helping their dying grandmother, but she was so happy to see people again, happy to be social. In the front hall, Dulcy put her finger to her lips when she asked a maid for her coat. Outside, she walked away from the line of waiting hansoms, heading south down Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The champagne had done wonderful things for her brain, now that she was alone. In Madison Square she stopped at a cart for a cheesy Greek pastry and skipped on, giddy, wiping oily fingers on a churchyard's brick wall. Past the half-lit triangle of the Fuller Building, she turned east at the Rivoli Hotel and waved to the doorman, who was loading a collection of large people into a carriage. A moment later, she heard footsteps and turned to find the doorman hurrying up behind her. "A telephone call," he said. "We just sent someone to the apartment to find you." In the Rivoli lobby the German at the front desk pointed to the telephone, and she tried to think through her panic as she reached for the receiver. If someone was dead, a telegram arrived. Telephones meant someone was still dying--an aunt upstate in Westfield--and there was a point to haste. But it was Henning Falk, calling from Seattle, and Dulcy's champagne mood evaporated while the operator finished introductions. "Walton's dead," she blurted out. "His ship went down. You're calling to say he's drowned." The man at the desk flinched. "No, no," said Henning. "I met your father this morning at the docks. But things are missing." She hadn't spoken to Henning in almost three years, and never before on the telephone, but he sounded so much like himself-- perhaps the voice was a little tighter, maybe there was less of a Swedish lilt at the end of each sentence--it took her a moment to find a new way to worry. "Missing. Documents?" "Well, yes, those too, but the money," said Henning. "We need your help; you need to come." Dulcy's face was hot from alcohol and her bolt through the city, and she wiped a last flake of pastry crust from her coat. Jabbering people floated around the lobby, and a little man who looked like death was sneezing ten feet away, each seizure driving him deeper into the soft upholstery of an armchair. This "we" meant Victor Maslingen, her father's business partner and her former fiancé: a royal summons. "You know that's not possible. I'm sure Walton's simply spent it." "Nobody could spend that much. Your father is not well." "Not well in what way?" There were so many possibilities. "He's lost his mind," said Henning. "What little remained. He is having problems with his memory, problems with logic. He is balmy. Barmy." "Put him on the train. I can meet him halfway and take him home." "No, Dulce. He's weak and he's feverish and he unbuttoned in the cab and fiddled himself. And it's all of the money, entirely, every drop gone. Victor is very upset." Every drop, fiddled. She felt Henning pick his way around a second language and an audience. At least six people in the hotel lobby could hear her end of the conversation; only the operator, who kept clearing his throat, could hear Henning's. She wondered if Henning was standing in Victor's library, if some of the static crackle was Victor, holding his breath, actually worried enough to have Henning beg her to come to Seattle. "I don't want Victor near me. I don't want to have to talk to him or see him every day." "He won't touch you," said Henning. "He doesn't want to see you, either. Please, Dulcy." Everything pleasant was over, again. A door slammed a continent away, Victor leaving the room. Excerpted from The Widow Nash: A Novel by Jamie Harrison All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
