A note about audience: These books seem to be aimed at girls about 8 years old and up. Claire is a good deal older, 12 in Book I, 14 in Book II, older in each book, though the cover drawings make her seem younger, as does the Book V cover drawing, which looks a little like a doll.

These books would probably appeal to the same audience as The American Girls series, though they don't contain an appendix with historical information. There are a lot of good details within the stories, like the description of a spider, an iron kettle with three legs and a flat lid, and the description in Book V of building a sod house. The details add a lot to a well-told story.

The story, each book about 90 pages, follows a family from "Lanark County in Upper Canada (now called Ontario)," into the wilderness across the river from Nauvoo, into Nauvoo, and back into the wilderness to find a place to create their civilization anew, that is, from civilization to peril to civilization to peril. Peril to civilization is a theme in these stories, but a subtle theme, because the stories are about perils in a small group of families, not the whole Church. Still, the families' perils come because they have chosen to unite themselves with a particular civilization.

The first peril happens because the Nicols are in the Church, but not among the church. Separated physically by the river from doctors or midwives, Claire's pregnant mother faces a difficult delivery alone. (My brother pointed out at Christmas that in KJV usage it is the mother that is delivered, from the travail of pregnancy and birth--see Luke 2:6)But that's not what the story is about, it's more the background against which Claire proves herself.

Each book deals with a particular problem children and young adults face in moving away from their parents and toward adulthood, from how to earn your parents' trust to how to get someone to fall in love with you, and the obstacle in Book I is Claire's parents' fears for her health.

The prologue, repeated with some variation in each book, tells how the Nicol family joined the Church and came to Nauvoo. Claire and her twin, Marie, got scarlet fever at age 6. They survived, due to the father's prayers, but Marie's heart was weak, and she died two years later after overexerting herself on Grandpa's farm. Hearing the Mormon missionaries preach some time later helped the family recover hope of being with Marie again, and they have moved to Zarahemla, across the river from Nauvoo.

Claire's parents worry that she might overexert herself, that her heart may be no stronger than Marie's, so her problem is how to convince them she's healthy enough to run a foot race in Nauvoo's Fourth of July celebration. She figures a way to prove her health, through defying her parents' fears, but her mother's pregnancy gives her a better way.

In Book II, the family has saved up enough to afford the move to Nauvoo, where Claire goes to work in the Mansion house, which means One More River to Cross isn't the first, or even second, third or fourth novel (if you count a novel as a single binding of pages under one cover, though by Poe's definition each of these novels is a short story able to be read at one sitting) to have Jane and Sylvester Manning and Grandmama as characters. Indeed, Claire's problem is that she's never seen a black person, and she's afraid of Jane. This problem is resolved by the end, in a scene where Jane and Claire grieve together, washing the blood stains out of Joseph Smith's white shirt. The line drawing of that shirt hanging on the clothes line with its eleven bullet holes in the front (three in the back) is simple and haunting.

In Book III, Claire and her father have parallel problems in preparing for Christmas and preparing to leave Nauvoo. Claire's problem is how to have enough energy to create Christmas presents, storybooks, for her brothers Jacques and Clairence and for Sylvester Manning, and get her work done during the day. Papa's problem is how to build a wagon in the cold of winter. He solves that by building it in the cabin, but makes a wrong measurement, so how is he going to get it out? And there's Brother Beck, Claire's piano teacher from Book II, acting strangely, ordering a lot more from the store than he can use.

Book IV echoes the problems in Books I & II, a problem pregnancy, and how we have to discard our prejudices to survive. After leaving Nauvoo in winter, Claire is travelling through Iowa Territory with Nathan and Polly Maughan. Polly is pregnant, and Nathan has gangrene in his hand because he improperly set a broken arm.

Sr. O'Brien, the midwife, helps Polly, but can't help Nathan: "I wish I knew what to do to save those fingers, but I have the gift of midwifery, so the Spirit instructs me only in matters that have to do with childbirth" (pp. 33-34).

A few paragraphs later she rebukes Nathan for saying he can't be cured.

     "If the Lord is, indeed, the creator, then certainly He knows how to repair His creations."
     "That makes sense," Claire said.
     "If you think healing is not possible, you're forbidding the Lord to work miracles in your life."
     Nathan stared as Sister O'Brien with a shocked expression.
     "I've never considered that," he said.
     "Well, you should. If you only had faith, the Lord would send servants -- perhaps angels -- who know how to heal gangrene."
     "She's right, Nathan," Claired said. "I'm sure the Lord would heal your hand, if you asked."
     "Listen to the child," Sister O'Brien said. "From the mouths of babes...."
     "Aye," Nathan said.
     "Just remember," Sister O'Brien continued, "not all angels look like angels. Don't let your pride stop you from accepting help from an angel." (pp. 34-35)

But of course, a little later Nathan almost does let his pride interfere, when the angel turns out to be an Indian woman named Pretty Shield.

"Everybody knows Indians are build differently," Nathan said. "Surgeons at the university in Edinburgh dissected the body of an Indian, and they couldn't even recognize the organs. Everyone knows that, lass. It was in all the papers." (pp. 56-7)

Well, Nathan prays to overcome his pride. (The line drawing on p. 60 of Nathan praying for an angel behind the wagon, looks like an allusion to the painting of George Warshington praying at Valley Forge -- but I'm not sure what the point of the allusion is.)

Pretty Shield sets his arm properly then gives Claire the gift of healing. Pretty Shield's granddaughter Mary, gives Claire this warning:

"My grandmother says this is Great Mystery you feel in your hands. It is to be used for healing. Great Mystery does not belong to you. It does not belong to anyone and connot be controlled. You are a river through which Great Mystery flows. If you start to think you control Great Mystery, the river will dry up, and Great Mystery will no longer flow" (pp. 77-8).

Besides its echoes of Joseph Smith's comments about the priesthood only being able to flow "without compulsory means" (D&C 121:46) this passage echoes Paris Anderson's own experience. I interviewed him in Jan. 2002 (the day Isaac Babel's daughter was on the Diane Rehm Show talking about her new collection of her father's stories) and he talked about his work in massage therapy, particularly with reiki, which involves the flow of energy around the body, and jin-shin, a variant of accupressure. "Reiki is probably the most mysterious and powerful way to work. Put your hands on the body and get out of the way. Let what happens happen," he said.

(Tangentially, Book IV's discussion of death suggests an interesting question. In some Native American traditions people do not speak the names of the dead. How do people raised in those traditions do temple work, and what are the implications of asking someone from such a tradition to speak the names of their dead in the temple? That would be a very interesting story.)

Book V takes the characters to Winter Quarters, and Claire trys to attract a boyfriend, so a good part of the book is comedy of manners. The other part deals with mustering the Mormon Batallion, and Paris told me this is where he got the idea for The Recollection of Private Seth Jackson, Mormon Battalion, Company D, which I'll review separately.

     Claire followed Captain Allen's gaze to a boy seated on the ground in the front row. It was Lot Smith who was staring back with a powerful, insolent glare.
     I wonder if those two are going to meet again as foes sometime in the future, Claire thought. Maybe Captain Allen is thinking the same thing Goliath thought when he looked at David. (p. 82)

There follows a debate about whether Nathan Maughan or anyone should join the batallion, which mirrors a debate in Seth Jackson about how to respond to batallion commanders who hate Mormons.

     Jane Manning shook her head slowly.
     "Nathan," she said slowly, "even if every Mormon man joined the batallion, it still wouldn't prove loyalty to the government. The Federal government is corrupt, and almost every member of it is so spineless he will ignore the truth if the truth is unpopular. "Mark my words," she said, shaking a finger, "whether we provide a batallion or not the American government will yet send an army with cannons to destroy us." (p. 46)
     "According to the Book of Mormon," Papa finally said, "the only type of war that can be justified by Heaven is a defensive war. That means a war in which we are fighting to protect our families, our lands, or religion. In the war with Mexico we would be attacking the lands home and families of the Mexican people, which is quite the opposite. I say this war is unrighteous and the powers of Heaven will not come to our aid in an unrighteous war." (p. 48)

Claire doesn't develop this idea, doesn't show what happens to / with / because of the Mormon Batallion, but the theme of attacking people's homes and religion is important elsewhere in Anderson's work, particularly in Tough Luck: Sitting Bull's Friend, which I'll also review separately.

The world of Claire, and Seth Jackson, and Tough Luck, and of Anderson's memoir, "On Growing Up Tough," (Irreantum 3:2, Summer 2001) makes me want more, such as the republication of Waiting for the Flash. I wish Paris Anderson's hands well in their work.

Harlow S. Clark