When you step off the train in Cadillac, Oklahoma, you'll wade through currents of hilarity and romance where the sheriff is in love with the wife of a prominent lawyer, and the banker's widow and a Las Vegas sex worker team up to beautify Cadillac. Not until a young female reporter cracks open the self-satisfied surface of the town is the folly, anger, and pain revealed. The resentments of tree-huggers, storeowners, and the town fathers ignite over a proposal to create a New England-style town green in this water-starved former Dust Bowl town. 
Citizens who don't care about town politics, deal with domestic abuse, religious rivalry and stale marriages. The sheriff, Jake Hale, seeks help from a retired lawyer, Sloane Willard, in an effort to save the life of a teenage girl accused of murdering the father who raped her. The town's guiding forces of rule following, religion, and guns unite as a praying mass of church-goers overwhelm Jake's attempt to manage an out-of-control hostage situation at Cadillac's Youth Detention Center. Before you get back on the train, you will have grown to love these people and their thirst for love, beauty, water and justice.

Cadillac, Oklahoma

Literature & Fiction

Smith, Louise Farmer

United States

Upper Hand Press LLC

Second Edition with Book Club notes and author interview by Ronna Wineberg, Senior Fiction Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review. In a series of interlocked stories Louise Farmer Smith, the author of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE, pierces the myths through four generations of one American family's mismatched marriages--the teenage girl lifted out of the hunger and chaos that followed the Civil War; the suicidal wife isolated on the Oklahoma prairie; the china painter whose husband cannot make a living; and her daughter who dreamed of luxury. Dark? Yes, but full of humor too. These six stories move backward in time to search out the influences on the next generation--the standards, prejudices, and overheard conversations that they forget but carry with them when they choose a spouse. This novel in stories is a practical pre-history of the momentum leading to women's liberation. It is a substantial addition to the social history of American women. Thoroughly researched the stories compellingly paint the settings of post-Civil War pioneer life and the female-dominated 40s, with the men at war.

One Hundred Years of Marriage

"Two people, husband and wife, sat side by side on the wagon bench. Though they looked down the same rough road and experienced the same dazzling or dismal scenery, the diaries suggest that they lived in different worlds." Louise Farmer Smith sets us squarely by the side of the woman on the wagon bench and vividly recreates the turmoil, excitement, and trepidation pioneer women experienced as they moved into the unknown.\ The Woman Without a Voice tells the story of a pioneering family―her own, much like that of Laura Ingalls Wilder's. However this story is not seen through the perspective of a child, but of a woman, mother, and wife. Using diaries and family stories, Smith focuses on the pioneer women in her own family. Silence and submission were the lot of married women who had no property and no say in where or how their families would live.

The Woman Without a Voice: Pioneering in Dugout, Sod House and Homestead

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Note to the reader: What was your father thinking the night he proposed to your mother? Why did she say yes? By the time we ask, all the compelling details have cooled into whatever myths they’ve chosen to tell us. Our grandparents’ stories are even more frozen, and the truths of our great-grandparents’ unions have perished in the airless memories of the dead. In ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE Louise Farmer Smith pierces the myths through four generations of one American family’s mismatched marriages—the teenage girl lifted out of the hunger and chaos that followed the Civil War; the suicidal wife isolated on the Oklahoma prairie; the china painter whose husband cannot make a living; and her daughter who dreams of luxury. Dark? Yes, but funny too. These six stories move backward in time to search out the influences on the children--the standards, prejudices, and overheard conversations--they forget but carry with them when they choose a spouse.

One Hundred Years of Marriage: A Novel in Stories

Genre Fiction

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Louise Farmer. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Smith, Louise Farmer

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Louise Farmer. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cadillac, Oklahoma

One Hundred Years of Marriage

The Woman Without a Voice: Pioneering in Dugout, Sod House and Homestead

One Hundred Years of Marriage: A Novel in Stories