Today’s wealth of young adult literature hadn’t appeared when I was an avid teenage reader. I did love the series of Nancy Drew and Sue Barton, Student Nurse, but I don’t remember a lot of others. My high school English teacher recommended classics she knew I would like (thankfully, not Moby Dick) and fed my bookworm well.
Fortunately, I also grew up in a family without restrictions about what I read, and Daddy belonged to the Peoples Book Club. As I recall, a popular book from a variety of publishers came once a month for our reading pleasure. I ran across one of these in our recent move that I remember enjoying more than once as I grew up. I decided to read it again and see how I would like it now that I’m actually old enough to read it.
The Pilgrim Soul, by Ann Miller Downes, gives fictional life to the real, but legendary, Hayes and Dolly Copp who were early settlers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The book spans a lifetime as Hayes and Dolly carve out a homestead in the virgin forests where they raise three sons and a daughter. The frontispiece illustration comes from the early part of the book and their life as Dolly leaves a life of comfort for the wilderness. Dangers of winter weather and harsh conditions form intermittent physical threats to the family and to other settlers who eventually join them and become friends. An underlying emotional threat comes from lack of understanding between the extreme introvert Hayes and the equally extrovert Dolly, even though the difference in their personalities helps them survive and thrive among their friends and the travelers who use their home as a refuge. The author draws their characters and those of their children well.
I did, indeed, enjoy the book as one old enough to read it. Interestingly, I saw that a new edition has been published with an alternative ending and some historical notes. I’m not sure I want to read a different ending, but I would like to go to New Hampshire and see the legendary Dolly Copp recreational areas.