A White Bird Flying

By Bess Streeter Aldrich

The white bird flying of endless possibilities, a tale situated around the days of the Great Depression, a life of freedom and goodness and fortune of another kind precedes the passing of matriarch Abbie Deal, a highly spiritual Nebraska prairies woman who had had a years-going elongate relationship of establishing life as an American pioneer after her humble royal Scottish roots of Europe. Her mother-in-law whose velvet gown and firm and yet entertaining countenance beams from a royal portrait rescued and brought by ship from Scotland to hang on the wall of a hand-built home grants the main character and writer at residence granddaughter Laura Deal her firm and calm self-esteem. She goes on to re-establish the lost legacy of female Scottish-hood by attending an Ivy league university. That and she becomes an albeit and hesitant sorority member who socializes as a tame and humble soul, a carrier of well-bred manners and pleasant social class. Behind the walls of her very own life, she still continues much as the author of the book to dream up the hours when she spends time writing alone. One eligible bachelor date after another which she regards as mere distractions from her deep studies and author compositions for the preparations for her best future possible, does not turn her head. However, the unspoken sorority rules also demand that she be more social. And so, in order to maintain membership, she must be an avid and compliant date in order to avoid the label of codger. "Young Rinemiller (Rinemueller) had told him once he felt the same way, as though the very loam and skies were different. He liked the young fellow. Going to make good too. Had a fine start from the old Reinmueller holdings, and with his technical knowledge he would make a big estate out of the old farms. Had a notion that Laura liked him pretty well." Laura's mother uses a form of subtle manipulation to coach her daughter from the secure fold of her child bedroom reading and writing comfort zone and out onto the plane of a seven-thousand-member student population college. Laura's best childhood friend named Allen, a young man of German descent whose bright blonde hair folds out three sets of waves also being ushered off to the same university as Laura is a more eager participant. The families are about second and third or more generation settlers and now that all of the hard work has paid off, this is they believe the next best step for their offspring. Laura's social desires fall far behind that of Allen. But her more reclusive nature does and does not win out. Once there she socializes with functional and chaste ease but finds her own way of being alone when she needs to do that. The book through the comparison of these two main characters produces a balance of duo personalities and vision. Despite, the highest redeeming portion of the story has more to do with who and where granddaughter Laura came from than with high society. That and that deep down inside, Laura knows that to live that way to be more valuable for herself as a soulful author than many of the most modern ways even people of her day chose to live, she must come to a more feasible monetary solution. A lot of people in America and other countries and particularly a lot of young adults today may want to understand the emotional and strong spiritual values of those whom they came from. Some of our ancestors whose desire became so strong as to escape the ancient tides of Europe and to create something new which had not been before, they saw the continent of the Americas as a place where they might do that. The astronauts and the Elon Musks and the Steve Jobs and our dear social media founders of today would have awed had they been alive today those rugged individualists of Laura's small town and farm terrain of Nebraska. A lot like the Alaska where the real author of the book actually took up residence at for a time - of the spaceships, social media and electronic autos, Laura's grandmother would have marvelled over the automatic dishwashers of today. And just the same, both the city and sub-division and other children of today may not understand how the farmers and settlers of yesterday made produce from seed and cream and butter from a cow and a homemade wooden churn. They also wore hand-sewn clothing and knew nothing about selfies. Additionally, either because of religious or superstitious beliefs, some may not had believed in looking at yourself in a mirror. However, the spiritual ode of the white bird flying was a whole different thing. The grandmother's prophetic bird nearly joined the old days of the prairie farm men and women to the new days amidst young university women's debutante dance ball gowns and the first large street automobiles and actual somewhat paved highways. Through fiction as real as life comes a tale of a town's people who became married to the old land they bought, the memories they had made together and for each other and God. "And now the rain was hurling itself at him again, madly, so that involuntarily he threw his arms over his bare head. It lashed him in a frenzy, and he made no progress in the face of its violence. He wanted to cry out against its madness. But he could not, for he was choking in a sea of it. His lungs were closed air-tight things that would not function, -a pair of blacksmith's bellows that had collapsed. His mind too seemed unsteady, wavering. The wind and the rain were getting the best of him. He was too exhausted to go on. For a long time, he stood swaying, holding himself upright only by the pressure of the cane sunk into the moist earth. For a moment he felt his consciousness slipping, as though he were drifting into some eternal oblivion. But by a superhuman effort he roused his waning forces and focused on one thought. He must pull himself together and go on. It was just a little way farther to the top of the slope. He must go on. From there he could see . . . from there he could see the lights of home." Of all times, at the height of the Great Depression author Bess Streeter Aldrich became one of the highest paid female authors and from the 1920's and afterwards, films of the best kind made which based on many of her dear books gave a kind of glory to her past pen and her prior pseudonym. Her book here, 'A White Bird Flying' seemed to be based on the authentic story of her real home life, the story of herself, her husband and her children and the rest of the combined families of the couple. The writer-based schoolteacher who had once lived in Alaska followed her real-life husband to Elmwood, Nebraska, the town that much of her stories are based on. Or so things may be eluded. However, after around the year 1911 she began to follow her heart and her intuition more, and money, as she had done what she loved most, followed. At that time, she became a regular author of stories for the Ladies Home Journal, McCall's Harper's Weekly and The American Magazine and became a popular author of teenage girls and young women. She was paid up to one-hundred dollars or more for each of her stories, which along with her first novel borderline the days of the Great Depression and past her husband's sudden and unexpected passing was actually especially worthy. At that time, going on to author numerous books such as 'The Woman Who Was Forgotten' which became a 1930's film, she followed that vein and many books and films later had become a highly successful family breadwinner herself. Aldrich is a feature woman of the Nebraska Hall of Fame and was also granted a Doctorate of Letters by the University of Nebraska. Her dedication to good writing shines on forever.