Marianne MonsonRecensioni

This spellbinding, page turner tells the story, based on a true story, of two working class British women, sisters Ida and Louise Cook, who scrimped and saved their money to attend operas in England and throughout Europe and ultimately became heroes.

Eventually, through the people they met in the opera business, they learned about the dangers facing Jews in Germany and smuggled furs and jewelry out of Germany and into England and personally escorted Jewish refugees to England. Ultimately, members of 29 families were saved by these brave women.

As an opera buff, I especially loved the portions early in the book dealing with opera but I think this book would appeal to non-opera buffs as well. This would be an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn about what ordinary people were able to accomplish during World War 2.

Well-written, well-researched and a book I would highly recommend.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.)½

You don't have to know anything about opera or even like it to read this book. It's mostly about Ida and Louisa Cook's work to get the Jewish people out of Germany and Austria. I found out somewhere in reading it that they were real people. Also, I didn't know there were notes about certain passages in the back until I was about a third of the way through. I still forgot to read them as there was no notation for when we should flip to the back. I think this was one of the best books I've read on the subject.½

This was another buddy read with my dad. I found this book fascinating for covering so many stories that I had never heard (considering the Civil War reading group I was in for a while), but at the same time there were a number of things that bothered me about this book:

1. Some moral equivalency between the North and South that felt a little gross.

2. Given how recent this book is, the lack of acknowledgement of transgender people was pointedly painful in a few places.

3. The author's tendency to over-reach when tying things together in each chapter conclusion.

That said, I REALLY ENJOYED many of the stories, and I love the way the book was formatted, with further reading sections right in the body text at the end of each chapter, encouraging you to read further about some of these remarkable people.

This book contains a number of minibiographies of women who settled in the American west in the 19th century. The author has done a good job of selecting women of diverse backgrounds. She encourages today’s woman to take inspiration from history.

The women include:
- Nellie Cashman – nurse, businesswoman, miner, and dog musher in the Yukon Gold Rush
- Clara Brown – born in slavery whose family was sold, eventually bought her freedom to search for her children
- Abigail Scott Duniway – a pioneer of the Oregon trail who became a news editor and early suffragette
- Maria Ruiz de Burton – writer of social satire on issues of Mexican-US land disputes
- Luzena Stanley Wilson – traveled from Missouri to California during the Gold Rush with her husband and two small children
- Mother Jones – social activist and agitator for coal mining safety and against child labor
- Gertrude Simmons (Zitkala-Ša) – musician and writer on Native American issues
- Mary Hallock Foote – author and illustrator (and part of the Angle of Repose controversy)
- Martha Hughes Cannon – frontier doctor, polygamist wife, and first female state senator
- Donaldina Cameron – crusader against sex trafficking in Chinatown in San Francisco
- Charley Parkhurst – stagecoach driver, farmer, and rancher, living as a man
- Makaopiopio – Hawaiian immigrant to Utah

Each woman could be (and some have been) the subject of an entire book. Monson inserts her observations about their lives in a somewhat didactic fashion, which may appeal to younger readers, but I found unnecessary. It whets the appetite to learn more about these women and this time period.

3.5

The Opera Sisters by Marianne Monson is a story of love, war, and Nazi Persecution of the Jews in Germany and Austria. It's wonderfully researched and written with compassion and empathy for the time.

The story is based on the Cook sisters, Ida Cook was a campaigner for the Jews and an author using the name Mary Purcell. She and her sister Mary Louise was instrumental in aiding 29 Jews to escape the persecution of Jews in Austria and Germany mostly after Kristallnacht.

They both loved opera so they were able to obtain tickets to concerts performed in Germany. These trips to the operas were coverups for what they were really up to. While there in Germany, it became word of mouth about what they could do to help these people that had had everything taken from them. They would take their jewelry and other valuable items back to England with them and keep them for the people. Then they were able to smuggle the people back to England. The only way that they were able to do this is recruit people in England to sponsor the Jews.

In a three-year period, they were able to save 29, men women, and children. Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss and his wife, soprano Viorica Ursuleac originally told them about the plight of the Jews. Ida as an author was able to support the effort with the money she made from the novels.

They had rented a small flat in England for some of these refugees that had nowhere else to go. After the war, the sisters continued their efforts to save as many people as they could from the nastiness that was the Nazis.

I love this book so much, cheered for the sisters and their endeavors, not a fan of opera but I found it very interesting that they were able to use this ruse to free people right under the Nazi guard's noses.

Impeccable research went into this story and it shows. I was the first that I had heard of the Cook sisters and I am glad I read this book. It will stay in my mind for a long time to come.

I give the book 5 stars.

historical-fiction, historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history-and-culture, holocaust, WW2, romance-writer, family, family-dynamics, fanatic about opera, bravery, British, rescue, opera-stars*****

The people are real, the history is real, the conversations are likely, the research is well documented, and the storytelling is very fine, indeed. I remembered reading about the sisters over a year ago and dug into my Goodreads pile to find it. This book is grand storytelling for an important piece of history and two very remarkable women. I really enjoyed this one!
"Ida Cook (1904 to 1986) was a British campaigner for Jewish refugees and a romance novelist as Mary Burchell. Ida Cook and her sister Mary Louise Cook (1901–1991) rescued Jews from the Nazis during the 1930s. The sisters helped 29 people escape, funded mainly by Ida's writing. In 1965, the Cook sisters were honoured as Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel. Between 1936 and 1985, Ida Cook wrote 112 romance novels as Mary Burchell in 1950 she wrote her autobiography, We Followed Our Stars," and The Bravest Voices: The Extraordinary Heroism of Sisters Ida and Louise Cook During the Nazi Era by Ida Cook was published in 2021.
I requested and received an e-book copy from Shadow Mountain Publishing via NetGalley. Thank you!

What an awesome job this author did with bringing this story alive. We meet the Cook sisters, Ida and Louise, on the cusp of their young adult lives. Soon, we are with these young women as they discover their mutual love of opera, and they save every cent they have to keep fulfilling their dreams.
They begin going to the continent from their home in Great Brittan, and are such enthusiastic lovers of Opera they are being to be recognized and meeting famous performers and others with their passion. These are real people, although the story is fictional, most of the the story is based on fact.
Soon, with a lot of people not believing, the evil was taking over Europe, and getting rid of the problem, the Jewish population!
These sisters were amazing people, they sacrificed and gave all that they had to help others, and there are people alive today because of them. A captivating read, with notes that correspond with the facts being revealed.
Thank you Marianne Monson!
I received this book through the Publisher Shadow Mountain, and was not required to give a positive review.

12 women. 12 stories. 12 totally fascinating stories.

Each chapter is about a different woman who stood up and did something with her life. Each story teaches women to live boldly, be brave, and to stand up for what you believe in!

Hardship was a common theme.

These women made their mark on the American frontier as entrepreneurs, ranchers, doctors, writers, teachers, philanthropists, and social reformers. They all endured vilification, discrimination, and personal tragedies at levels unimaginable today yet remained determined and strong.

Some lives are already well-documented (although I had never heard of any of them), while others deserve wider recognition. For example, Clara Brown, the former Virginian slave, or Zitkala-Sa, Sioux musician and activist, or Donaldina Cameron from New Zealand, who rescued Chinese girls from forced labor in San Francisco, or Welsh immigrant to Utah, Martha Hughes Cannon, who became the first female State Senator and defeated her own husband on the ballot – a husband she just happened to share with several other wives! Many of the women in this book are Mormon.

The author’s personal anecdotes and opinions at the close of each section was different. There are also many sources and references listed for those who wish to discover more which I plan to do as some of the biographies I wanted way more information on.

Frontier Grit
The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women
By: Marianne Monson
Narrated by: Caroline Shaffer
This is a remarkable collection of strong women who, each in their own way, conquered the west and the barriers that was placed in front of them with courage and tenacious gumption. It tells of 12 women from different walks of life, totally different stories, but all very intriguing and interesting! This was a free listen with Audible Plus! Recommend it highly!
Terrific narration also!

As a child, Mattie and her family traveled by covered wagon to Utah. Along the way, her baby sister and father died. This ignited in Mattie a desire to study disease and healing. This book follows her life through medical school, marriage to a polygamist, travels to Europe, and into politics.

This was definitely an interesting story. However, at times the book seemed to skip through events, or skip forward in time in a lurching, jolting way. My other big criticism is that the author included quotes from Mattie at the beginning of each chapter. The quotes often made little sense and did not work with the short chapters. This felt like a first novel, with need of critical editing. Overall, 3 out of 5 stars.

An interesting examination of a handful of historical figures from a variety of backgrounds. Although obviously well-researched, the writing and brevity of each woman's journey left me wanting more. Overall, the book feels like more of an introductory overview rather than an in-depth examination of life during this time. I might recommend this book to those who want the bang-for-their-buck and direct others to individual biographies of the more interesting women covered here.

An interesting book about many fascinating frontier and pioneer women.

History, women, don't get in their way! Good pick up/put down book, could be read by ages 10-110.
These women were amazing!

I thought this book should have been an exciting read about these interesting women. It read too much like a text book for my tastes.

Grit- something i wish i had, maybe i do? BUT i do know myself well-enough to know that i would not have nearly enough of the stuff to equal the women in these 12 stories.
Frontier..." this place of possibility remains open for average people to help determine the way things are going to work, because it is still anyone's guess how the future will unfold"
I do understand what must be the thrill of the freedom of being the first, of standing up for yourself and others for what is right, and these women had the guts and strength of most men of the time. ( more actually )
My one negative? The book was too short!

Marianne Monson brings gathered stories of women who broke the traditional mold of wives and mothers to make a significant contribution to the lives of others as writers, manager, activists, and crusaders. Each chapter contains a brief history, locales, relationships, and their prominence. The twelve women are: Nellie Cashman, Aunt Clara Brown, Abigail Scott Duniway, Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton, Luzena Stanley Wilson, Mother Jones, Zitkala-Sa, Mary Hallock Foote, Martha Hughes Cannon, Donaldina Cameron, Charley Parhurst, and Makaopiopio. This is a great book to read during women’s history month.

Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson is a recommended collection featuring the story of twelve women who were pioneers.

The women featured in each short chapter are:
Nellie Cashman: Gold Rush “Boomer”; a nurse, businesswoman and gold prospector.
Aunt Clara Brown: a former slave who became an accomplished and beloved community leader.
Abigail Scott Duniway: Oregon Trail suffragette; "Abigail burned at these injustices. Women contributed economically, were held accountable for debts, but remained powerless to own property or manage their own incomes."
María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: The first Mexican-American novelist.
Luzena Stanley Wilson: Ever-resourceful; a gold-rush entrepreneur.
Mother Jones: She could not be silenced; a school teacher who became a labor activist and community organizer. "For over fifty years, Mary traveled the country speaking on behalf of child workers, steelworkers, deported Mexican workers, and coal miners. She once declared to a judge, 'My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression. . . . My address is like my shoes: it travels with me.'
Zitkala-Sa: “Red Bird”; a Sioux writer, editor, musician, teacher, and activist
Mary Hallock Foote: Mining town author and illustrator. Wallace Stegner was captivated by Mary’s story and his 1972 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Angle of Repose, was based on her life.
Martha Hughes Cannon: Frontier doctor, state senator, polygamist, refugee, and women’s rights activist.
Donaldina Cameron: The Most Loved and Feared Woman in Chinatown. Donaldina Cameron rescued thousands of girls from sex trafficking rings, and then raised them as her own daughters.
Charley Parkhurst: Most celebrated stagecoach driver in the west; she lived her life as a man.
Makaopiopio: The Spirit of Aloha; one of the first Hawaiian immigrants to settle the colony of Iosepa.

Frontier Grit is a well-researched, easy to read summation of the lives of these 12 women. Each chapter opens with a picture of the woman and a quote. As is my wont for documentation, I appreciate that Monson includes at the end of each chapter a list of books to consult for more information and that she has footnoted all of her resources. This will be a good resource for students because it will be easy to understand and is concise.

That said, it does have a few drawbacks. I truly wish Monson had restrained herself from adding her own personal thoughts and commentary at the end of each chapter. Surely each woman's life should speak for itself and different readers will likely have diverse lessons they need to learn from each woman's life. I am also beginning to detest the word "grit" which is currently being overused in a wide variety of venues. Enough with your grit everyone. Please look for a more deliberate and appropriate word to reflect your presentation, theories, and opinions.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.

http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/2016/09/frontier-grit.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1746399346

This little nugget is a delightful find and carries quite a punch for a small book. The stories of 12 fascinating women will captivate you while exposing you to the history they did not teach us in school.

The author purposefully chose 12 women of different nationalities, ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic status, to illustrate the diversity of the American West. Contrary to what our history textbooks and the Hollywood movies claim, white males were not even half the true story of the West much less the whole story. Monson wants to help correct that distortion. She hopes that by understanding the severe restrictions on women in the 19th century, modern women will understand how much we owe those who came before us, and understand what they were risking by pursuing their goals. They faced physical hardships and legal barriers that no longer exist for us. They endured unfathomable personal losses but clung either to faith in God, in life, in themselves, or simply refused to give in and give up.

I would love to summarize the story of each of these remarkable women for you, but the publisher wouldn’t give me the entire page! Some were authors who used their way with words to tell a female perspective on topics; some were illiterate but found other ways to make themselves understood. Some were political firebrands, bent on the women’s vote, against the women’s vote, for property ownership, for temperance, against temperance, etc. Just like today, women of the West were varied in their interests, concerns, and viewpoints.

Mother Jones, one of the most famous women of the frontier, endured the loss of her entire family – all her young children and her husband within a very short period of time. Instead of giving in to depression and despair, she set about to make her life meaningful. Abigail Scott Duniway was a staunch suffragette and insisted that “obey” be removed from her marriage vows.

Martha Hughes Cannon was also a women’s right activist, a medical doctor, and the fourth wife of a Mormon polygamist. She ran on the Democrat ticket against him on the Republican side to become the first female state senator of Utah. Martha had to resign in her second term because her third pregnancy gave away the fact that she was still engaged in marital relations with her polygamist husband, which was by then against federal law. She was full of contradictions.

Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton was an upper class, educated, proud Mexican woman, who nevertheless defied her family and her church and married a “white man” in a Protestant church. She became the first Mexican-American female novelist. She was a bit conflicted, however, as her writing showed the Mexican viewpoint of American expansion, but from an aristocratic bias, minimizing the Mexican workers. The last years of her own life were spent trying to repel dozens of squatters who were staking claims on her own vast ranch.

Aunt Clara Brown was born in a slave cabin in 1800, month and date unknown. She was given no last name and no one recorded her birth. As a teenager, she married the very handsome new slave acquired by the farmer. When times got tough, he had to sell Clara, her husband and their 2 children. The family was torn apart. Clara’s unquestioning faith in God and ceaseless prayer guided her life. She eventually brought her own freedom, made her way West to St. Louis where she earned some money cooking and doing laundry. After the Dred Scott decision, St. Louis was not safe for blacks and she moved to Kansas. The freedom and tolerance of the West called to her and she talked a wagon train master into letting her accompany his train of 26 single men as a cook and laundress. Blacks were not allowed in the wagons, so she walked next to the wagons during the day and at night cooked, did laundry and slept in the open air. In 8 weeks, she reached her destination of Colorado, bought a cabin for 25 dollars, opened a laundry business and in a few years, was one of a handful of women who owned property in the state and was one of the wealthiest with 10 thousand dollars in cash plus her property. She used her money to help her community and her church and continued to pray to be reunited with her daughter. By this time she knew her husband and son were gone.

Charley Parkhurst, the most celebrated stagecoach driver in the West, was a woman who passed as a male from the age of nine. Her gender was discovered upon her death in 1879.

I think you’ll enjoy the stories of these wonderful women. There are immigrants from Ireland, New Zealand, and Wales, a black born into slavery, middle class white women with almost no education to unusually high levels of education, some who pursued their professions while having families, some who went West in a wagon, an Hawaiian who converted to Mormonism and moved to Utah with her family, a young woman who at age 19 devoted herself to fighting the enslavement of Chinese girls in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Also a Mexican aristocrat, and a Yankton Lakota whose father was white.

Each chapter is the story of one of the women, followed by about 2 pages of the author’s interpretation of why that woman’s life story was chosen. She is very clear about her purpose in writing this book and if you aren’t interested in reading her plug her viewpoint, just skim through it. She offers an excellent appendix at the end of each story with suggestions for books to read on that person, as well as excellent annotated footnotes.
This book is available now for preorder at the major vendors. I was given a galley of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. My rating is 3.75/5.0.

Reading Marianne Monson’s stories of twelve bold and inspiring women in Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women, I was often reminded of the daily devotionals from a monthly publication called Our Daily Bread. Our church handed them out to everyone each month and we all read them. My sisters still read Our Daily Bread. Contrarian as I am, I always thought them slightly at odds with the Baptist doctrine of soul liberty, because they often told us how we were supposed to interpret Bible verses, rather than simply giving us context and recognizing our competency to get the point on our own.

I mention this because Monson reminded me so much of the authors of those devotionals in her lack of trust in her readers competency to find their own inspiration and understanding of these women’s lives.

Frontier Grit tells the stories of twelve amazing and inspiring women, from Charley Parkhurst who lived her life as a man and achieved fame as one of the greatest stagecoach drivers in the West. She tells the story of Makaopiopio who was one of the Hawaiians who established a colony in Utah and of Zitkala-Sa, the Sioux woman who wrote an opera and spoke on behalf of Native American rights. All of the women were quite amazing and great examples of courage, resolve and yes, of grit.

There were some curious juxtapositions that came about because each woman’s story is a discrete presentation. Her history, how Monson thinks that story should inspire us, and then some suggestions for further reading (something I appreciated very much). The most jarring example was the story of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton who wrote and spoke on behalf of the Californios who were citizens of Mexico before their land was annexed to the United States. Squatters would settle on their land and there would be long land disputes and they often lost their land. The very next story was about Luzena Stanley Wilson who was an frontier entrepreneur. She was also a squatter on Californio land belonging to a man named Vaca. The “hills and the wildflowers entreated them to stay” but I bet Vaca did not. Add to that, the ironic complaint about later squatters trying to take the land they took by squatting and well, that is how the “West was won” but it is doubly ironic being the story immediately following the story of María and the great injustices done to her.

Monson does a good job of telling the women’s stories and has done a lot of research. In particular, the story of Makaopiopio Kaohimaunu is a testament to her research and dedication to unearthing the stories of pioneer women from the past. There is not much trace of her, not even a Wikipedia entry, and Monson drew her story out by talking to her descendants, going to Utah to see the traces of the former colony and lifting her out of the past, so we can learn of this amazing woman. Most of the women in the book will be new to readers, other than Mother Jones whose inclusion surprised me because she is so well-known. I also valued the inclusion of suggested further reading and sources for more information.

My own feelings about this book are mixed. I enjoyed the stories of the women, but every chapter ended with Monson telling us how we should feel about the women’s stories, how they should make us think about the past, about society today and what lessons we should draw. She has no faith in us as readers to find our own inspiration, turning these women’s stories into didactic morality tales for our edification. So every story, in the end, was ruined by this irritating coda. If you stop reading after the colophon in each chapter, the book would be so much better.

Frontier Grit will be released September 6th. I received an electronic advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/frontier-grit-by-marianne-...