| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 275 words from this article are provided below; about 509 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Joel Daehnke. In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer: Cultural Narrative and Redemption on the American Frontiers, 1830–1930. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 2003. Pp. 299. Cloth $59.95, paper $26.95.

Joel Daehnke's book "intends to map the synchronous concerns of the Christian and republican schemes" (p. 11) in American culture's vision of westward expansion. Daehnke argues that Frederick Jackson Turner's famous "frontier thesis" with its nationalist bias neglected the more far-reaching and enduring sacred and secular hopes that Americans projected onto landscape and ignored roots in older and ongoing European ideals of perfection and progress. Daehnke explores his theme in five connected essays that center on both well-known and more obscure texts. He begins with the theme of eastern womanhood redeeming (or at least attempting to redeem) the west as portrayed in Caroline Kirkland's A New Home, Who'll Follow? (1839), a saga of frontier Michigan. Kirkland's character, refined, eastern-born Mary Clavers, hoped "to find on her arrival a sort of naturalized citizenry ready to accept the standards and behaviors implicit in the market economy that was at the heart of her civilizing vision" (p. 22). Instead, she discovered lazy settlers, literally unwilling to nurture the domestic geranium cuttings that would beautify, domesticate, and add value to their rude lives. Their indifference to her cultural guidance and expectations challenged not only Clavers, but the advance of civility and the republic. Paradoxically, these settlers would be the very ones who would move farther westward, breaking new ground on which to nurture the perfection of the nation and world as embodied in Kirkland's vision of redemption.

. . .

There are about 509 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.