This is the second novel that I've read by Aldrich. The first was A Lantern in her Hand, the novel for which Aldrich is best known. I won The Lieutenant's Lady from a blog give-away in 2010 and read it shortly after visiting Aldrich's house for the first time in March 2011 (I wrote a blog post about the visit that you can read here: http://bit.ly/dRNYhJ).

The Lieutenant's Lady is about a young woman, Linnie, from the East who's visiting relatives in Omaha, Nebraska in the late 1860s shortly after Nebraska gains statehood. Omaha is booming, the Civil War is over, and the US Army has turned its attention to making the western lands safe for white settlement. On her way home to the East, Linnie ends up traveling up the Missouri River to tell her cousin's fiance, a lieutenant in the Army stationed at a remote fort, that he's lost his betrothed to another man. Our heroine is already smitten with the young lieutenant. He's understandably upset when Linnie shows up rather than his bride-to-be, but he marries Linnie the day she arrives for the sake of her safety and saving face. They eventually fall in love while dealing with the hardships and dangers of Army life on the plains.

The story is based on the diary of an Army wife that someone sent to Aldrich--she was known for collecting pioneer stories to authenticate her fiction. I'd love to read the original diary to see what Aldrich made up and what she may have left out. The novel was published in 1942 and I wonder if Aldrich chose this story as her subject due to the pro-army feeling she was be able to create.

I enjoyed The Lieutenant's Lady and recommend it to readers who are interested in the historical time period and/or western literature. It's the kind of book I loved to read and deconstruct as an undergraduate. Racial attitudes, service vs greed, and gender issues abound in this novel. ( )

Based on a true story of a woman who marries an army man during the post-Civil War battles with the Indians in the Western Territories. She travels with him from fort to fort, quickly adapting to the harsh conditions, but never really accepting her situation as permanent. All the while she struggles with the belief that her husband still pines for his first love, her cousin, until the very end, when he finally declares his devotion to his wife. An enjoyable, quick read, and--because it was written in 1942--wonderfully free from modern commentary. ( )

Based on a true story, I found this book to be an absolutely fascinating tale of a woman. I leaned towards a 4.5 rating because there was a point when Norman and Linnie should have hashed it out. I understand why communication was limited for a large portion of the novel, but that last chapter deserved some sort of communication resolution. I was so enthralled by the rest that I chose to overlook it. The historic tidbits were juicy, as were the sly glimpses into characters like Henry. I'm glad I found a library that owned it. ( )

This story was taken from actually diary. Linnie Colsworth, travels up the Missouri River from Council Bluffs, Iowa to break her cousins, Cynthia's engagement after promising her she will let Norman Stafford know Cynthia has married another. Linnie makes her way to a fort in the wilderness to Norman. Norman tells her there is no place for her to stay and convinces Linnie they should get married. She will then have a place to stay until the next boat arrives on the river to return her to civilization. Linnie finds one excuse after another for not taking each boat as it arrives. Eventually, Lieutenant Stafford and Linnie fall in love.
This was not as good as her book A Lantern in Her Hand. ( )

The first eleven pages where fine, the 12th and 13th page was missing however. Never finished reading this.