Mail-Order Brides: The Real Letters and Advertisements

 While researching my notes for The Malpais Bride, I spent a good amount of time reading about real mail order brides and watching some documentaries.

This was a real warning.

We tend to picture something vaguely romantic.  A lonely but kind young man, a beautiful and brave woman, a long train ride, and then a happy ending out west where everything works out.

Sometimes it did.

But the moment you start reading the actual letters and newspaper advertisements, the whole thing becomes a great deal more complicated.

There are some accounts that if a woman came to a town, she could be proposed to on the spot.  Boys were in awe of these women and their footprints left in the mud.  Lonely men could become furious if they were promised brides and fewer women than promised showed up.

Men of all ages would place advertisements in the newspapers stating rather frankly that they were looking for a wife.  They would sometimes describe their land, home, income, livestock, and what kind of women they wanted to marry.  Some of the ads were rather specific and read like job descriptions.

Women would occasionally write back describing themselves and their willingness to travel.  This wasn't silliness or wanting adventure.  This was a calculated decision and a huge risk.  Marriage, even to a stranger could mean land, stability, a house of their own, and freedom from a lifetime of factory work or domestic labor.

But the risks were enormous.

They were agreeing to marry a man they hadn't met, moving to a place they've never seen, possibly living miles away from the nearest town.  Some women married men old enough to be their grandfathers and immediately started having children.

When we look at history, it's easy to turn people into types: the mail order bride, the frontiersman, pioneer women.  But when we start to read their words they stop being types and start to become people again.

Many were lonely.  People were practical.  They were scared and hopeful.  They were trying to build a life with what limited choices they had.

As a writer, when you read stuff like this, you don't just see history.

You start to see stories and then you write those stories.

Prairie Madness

While researching for The Malpais Bride, I came across something I had heard of before but never really looked into closely: prairie madness (also known as prairie fever).

The Great Planes in Nebraska.

It sounds dramatic, like something out of a horror novel, but was a very real thing for people on the American frontier.

Imagine it, you pack up everything you have and move from a town or a wooded area where you know everyone and everything that lives and breathes and suddenly you're in a place where you can see for miles in every direction.  There aren't any hills, trees, buildings, only grass, sky, and wind.  If you're lucky you might see a fellow traveler on the way.  If you're extremely fortunate you might have a neighbor within visual range.

Many settlers, especially women, wrote in letters and journals about the isolation and how lonely they were.  There was nothing but the horizon that just kept on going and going.

Some people lived miles from their nearest neighbor.  Women's husbands were gone for most of the day working the land or cattle.  Some didn't even get the opportunity to speak to another person for days at a time.  Letters could take weeks or months just to get somewhere.

Some of these women were also mail order brides.  Many were married off to men old enough to be their grandfathers and then locked away in their homes.  If fate were merciful they'd get a kind husband.

At the time we didn't have words for touch starvation, isolation, postpartum depression, or the sheer psychological impact of living in a landscape that felt barren.

Lacking the words or the explanation they said that the prairie drove people mad.  

We tend to look at the old west with nostalgia.  We imagine cowboys, settlers, and adventure and freedom that wide open spaces can provide.  That was a part of it, yes, but there's also that other darker side.

Prairie madness wasn't really madness.  It was isolation, grief, being far from all that you knew and knowing you couldn't easily go back.  You were a human living in a place that didn't care if you lived or died.

And for the writer, there's a moment when you learn about it, you immediately think "That's a story."  

Because if the land is big and lonely enough, people start to imagine things.  The brain is sneaky that way.

And that's where prairie madness not only becomes history, but part of a story.

How I Ended Up Writing The Malpais Bride

I am part of a siren anthology that will be coming out later this year.  It still feels a little bit like being invited to sit at the cool table in the cafeteria.

This is how most of my stories start...not with a plan, but with two completely unrelated ideas that meet in a dark alley and decide to cause problems.  Kind of like the English language.

When I first joined the project, I did what I always do when I am trying to be a Serious Writer.  I had come up with several ideas.  I jotted down a total of six ideas.  I opened up word documents with my ideas.  I gave them dramatic working titles.  I wrote my notes and made outlines.

And every last one of them refused to cooperate.

Sometimes ideas are like that.  They look promising as they tease you.  Buuuuut, the moment you actually try to build a story around them they wander off, sit down, and announce "Now I'm not doing it!"  As much as you might want to you can't force a story into existence.  You can only follow after it and hope that it eventually decides to speak to you.

While all of this was happening, I had bought and was reading a nonfiction book about mail order brides in the old American west.  It showed real advertisements, letters, and women who agreed to marry men they had never met.  They would travel hundreds of miles to live in a place they had never seen before.

We tend to make this sound romantic, but when we really think about it, it's downright terrifying.  Brave, absolutely, but also so lonely in a way it's hard for us to imagine now.

At the same time, I was supposed to be writing about sirens.  It wasn't to be the friendly, singing, animated variety we're often familiar with but the older kind.  The dangerous kind that were feathered, finned, and cruel.

And somewhere, in the middle of all of it, those two ideas found one another and decided to become a story.

The Malpais Bride takes place in a world where magic is real, but greatly hidden.  Most people will never see it, and if they do, they often explain it as something else.

But the sea does not particularly care whether we understand it or not.  There are old things in the water and there is a sea goddess who rules the waves and everything in them.  Including, sometimes, those who steal her children from the sea.

And once those two ideas mashed together, the characters started showing up, and the story began doing what stories sometimes do.  It started walking ahead of me and it expected me to keep up.

I am very excited for this anthology because sirens are such strange, beautiful, and dangerous creatures I have the opportunity to write about.  

And that is how I ended up writing The Malpais Bride.  Because two completely unrelated ideas met each other, and I was lucky enough to be there when they did.

The Mermaid

When I was seven, Disney's The Little Mermaid came out.  I am fairly certain that every girl goes through a mermaid phase at one point or another in their lives.

Frankly, if I were a mermaid, I would also surface briefly, cause a scene, and then disappear for dramatic effect.

Around that time, my Uncle Scott (who technically is not my uncle, but a family friend) told me once, that when he was out on a boat, he saw a mermaid splashing about.

Mom told him not to fill my head with stories lest I go and blab them around the school as I was known to weave stories on the playground.  I had already come up with a very lengthy ancient Egypt story.  I also swear kids go through ancient Egypt and dinosaur phases.

I, however, had questions.

I asked him what the mermaid looked like?  He said she had long black hair and very pale skin.  I asked what she was doing.  She was splashing in the water near the boat like she was playing and then dove down and disappeared.

I remember this with absolute clarity.

When we're kids we live in a world where things like that are still possible.  The world was big then.  The lakes are full of deep secrets, the woods are thick enough for witches, and the ocean can hold anything it wanted to.  Only about 25% of the ocean has been mapped out and only 5% has been deeply explored.

As we get older we spend a lot of time trying to explain the world.  We label things, measure them, put up signs reading "Dry Paint" (I've seen this), and we insist everything has an explanation, a time, and a place.

But when you're seven the world isn't yet fully explained so it's still enchanted.

I think that's why I remember the mermaid story so well.  Not because I completely believed nor disbelieved it, but it lived in that perfect little space of maybe.

Maybe he saw a seal.  Maybe he saw someone swimming.  Maybe he just wanted to entertain me by telling me a story.

I think children understand something that adults often forget:  not everything that is important has to be proven.  Some things are allowed to just be stories and mysteries.

And some things, if you're lucky, stay with you your entire life, like a mermaid disappearing under the water and leaving you staring at the surface wondering what else might be down there.

And a small part of me, even now, hopes he really did see one.

Why Mine Was the One They Took Pictures Of (And Why That Felt Strange)

 I'm normally not a painter, but I wanted to do an abstract art class held in the park this evening.

Phart!  I mean--art!

Dad always used to say spell it with a "ph" so that way you "aren't cursing."

In some ways I felt a bit like I was stepping back into childhood with the plastic table clothes, the shared paint, and the quiet concentration as you painted.  There was that unspoken agreement of "We're all here to make something."

The instructions were fairly simple: pick three colors, grab two stencils, and make your abstract leaf.  There were about nine people total.  A good chunk of them chose to follow the example of muted pallets of black, gray-green, and muted gold.

Now there's nothing wrong with that.  There IS comfort in following a guide.  You can even make the argument there's safety in knowing what something is "supposed" to look like.

But then, I'm different.  I went with black, white, and orange.  I wanted to create something autumn themed and I did so with the limited colors we had.  At first my leaves were pretty normal looking and then it took on a form that was less craft like...and more like a story that had weaved it's way into paint.  Fun fact about me:  I majored in art and minored in English in college.

And then something unexpected happened:  people wanted to take pictures of mine.  Not of everyone else's but just mine.

And frankly, that felt strange and uneasy.  It wasn't a triumphant "look at me!" sort of thing.  It was that quiet way where you feel the room shifting around you and you're not entirely sure about how you feel about it.

Standing out doesn't always feel good.  Sometimes it feels isolating and it makes you look around and think "Why not them too?"

Their pieces, their effort, and their choices all mattered.

But difference often draws the eye.  Being bold and different interrupts any expectations.  And whether we mean it or not, we notice the things that break the patterns.

It wasn't better or more worthy.  It was simply different.

And maybe that's the lesson.  We don't need to be louder or be seen, but follow our instincts.  When we lean into the part of us that chooses contrast over comfort people notice.  You don't have to out perform the room or outshine anyone.  All you have to do is be willing to make something that feels like you even if it looks nothing like the example on the table.