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Charley's Choice: The Life and Times of Charley Parkhurst
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by:
ISBN:
0-7414-4643-X
©2008
Price:
$15.95
Book Size:
5.5'' x 8.5''
, 280 pages
Category/Subject:
FICTION / Historical
Charley's Choice: The Life and Times of Charley Parkhurst is a fictional memoir of a California gold rush era stagecoach driver, who, upon death, was discovered to be a woman.
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Abstract:
Charley Parkhurst ran away from an orphanage, worked hard learning horse craft, and, over the ensuing years, earned a hallmark reputation driving a six-up in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia, and California during the gold rush era. When death overtook Charley many long-time friends and acquaintances were astounded to learn the tough old stage-driver was a well-endowed woman who had given birth at some point in her life. A member of the all male Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Charley was the first woman to vote in California during the 1868 federal election, fifty-three years before women won the right to vote.
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Customer Reviews
Amazing Life Story!
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06/18/2009
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Reviewer:
Lori Orser
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Charley's Choice is not the typical type or genre of book that I pick up and read -- but I'm really glad that I did choose it. Ms. Hill hooked me on the first page, which is actually the end of Charley's story. There was a mystery there, and I needed, not just wanted, but NEEDED, to follow the clues through the rest of the book.
The first chapter, after "The End," took me to the beginning of Charley's story, as a child in an early 19th centuru orphanage. A girl, Charley abandoned her dresses for boys clothing, to more easily run, climb trees, and sneak into the stable for time with the horse. Horses were what she loved, and all that she wanted to do with her life revolved around them.
After a tragedy, Charley makes her first choices. She runs away from the orphanage, disguises herself and calls herself a boy, and eventually finds a job working with horses in a livery stable.
In Hill's deft hands, Charley comes vividly to life in that first paragraph of her story -- a living child. Although quite young, Charley realizes the limited choices for women in her time and world. She decieds to live as a man and be responsible for her own life. The story describes the increasing difficulties of that decision as she matures both physically and emotionally, but through the joys and tragedies of her live, she sticks to her guns and continues to make her own choices right up to the way she dies.
In the hands of a lesser writer, this story could have rung false or dropped to a maudlin level at points. Fern Hill obviously came to "know" Charley Parkhurst through her research and as she wrote the book. She loves Charley, but portrays her honestly, warts and all. Charley isn't idolized, though her many quite amazing accomplishments shine through her down-to-earth "auto-biography." Her mistakes, and how she copes -- or sometimes fails to cope -- with personal tragedies, help make Charley a believable person. Not a character, not a heroine, but a flesh and blood person I wish I could have met. Although through Fern Hill's writing, I feel as if I have.
Buy this book, read it, and pass it on to anyone and everyone you know who loves a good story. You won't regret it, and your friends will thank you for introducing them to Charley Parkhurst and Fern Hill.
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