Western Clearings

The frankness with which Caroline Kirkland wrote about frontier life did not sit well with her neighbors in small Pinckney, Michigan, the town founded by her and her husband. For that and financial reasons, they returned to New York City, where she continued to write and penned this lively and humorous account of life in the West in 1846.

The world Caroline lived in was replete with land speculation, thieves, and adventures galore. But it wasn't all bad. She also writes with great sympathy a...