Book Review: The Stout Hearted Seven

Plumfield Moms

Wow! What a story! I would have been impressed if The Stout-Hearted Seven had been fiction. To know that it is non-fiction is exhilarating and tragic all at the same time. Reading true stories like this makes things like Marvel movies seem ridiculous. True courage and fortitude are not found in superheroes with capes but in stout-hearted people with a will to follow God’s leading and their own conviction.

I read the Sterling Point reprint of the original text written by Neta Lohnes Frazier. Frazier opens this memoir by explaining her personal relationship with two of the Sager sisters and pointing to her sources which were mostly primary source material. She explains that she has added dialogue but that even that is based on research and reasonable deduction. After she sets the stage, she begins at the beginning and tells the entire ordeal in the voice of an omniscient narrator. This book reads like an excellent Landmark Book or Messner Biography. It is easy to see why Sterling Books reprinted this one alongside the many Landmark reprints that they did. This is absolutely worth reading. And the audiobook is excellent.
https://plumfieldandpaideia.com/the-stout-hearted-seven-orphaned-on-the-oregon-trail/