Mary White Gordon’s Memoir Published

Local historian and sociologist Ron Roizen has been working with the Gordon family to publish the memoir of Mary White Gordon, who wrote about her childhood growing up in Wallace between about 1900 and 1910. It’s called A Child’s-Eye View, and offers a charming and innocent portrayal of life in the mining camp during that time.

This little book, only about 60 pages, discusses everyday life in a way we don’t often see, because there was really nothing “significant” that she experienced, aside from her account of the 1910 fire, which appears toward the end of the book. But don’t get me wrong on the lack of significance: this everyday quality of life in Wallace is what makes her memoir valuable. We get a vivid picture of the town in the time period that predated the arrival of the car, as seen through the eyes of a child. There are also pictures from the Barnard-Stockbridge Collection, housed at the University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives.

“Why did Mary’s father, Henry White, send his shirts all the way to Chicago for laundering? What was it like to coast one’s bike at breakneck speed down one of the long wooden flumes that decorated the steep canyons around Wallace? Did Mrs. Hoyt’s “big gray earthen jar” of taffy never empty? And what was the town’s reaction when Mr. McCarthy left his wife at home and took his “pretty nurse” with him to Hawaii instead? These and so many more questions about life and times in the frontier mining town of Wallace, Idaho – in the decade before the Great 1910 Fire – are answered in Mary White Gordon’s wholly absorbing and warmly affectionate memoir.”

You can purchase the book for $6.00 plus $3.99 shipping through Lulu’s print on demand service by clicking here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mary-white-gordon/a-childs-eye-view/paperback/product-23237541.html

Go check it out. Buy a copy for yourself and/or others in your life. Roizen has done an incredible service to the history of Wallace by making this little jewel available. Apparently, you can read Kinyon Gordon’s “Introduction” and Roizen’s “Editor’s Note” on the site before deciding whether or not you’d like to purchase one. I received my copy in the mail the other day and am happy with how it turned out!