Get Your Hands On Heres To The Ladies: Stories Of The Frontier Army Articulated By Carla Kelly Available Through Document

collection of short stories is absolutely superb, I am accustomed to Carla Kelly as a writer of Regency romance, but this anthology really showcases not only her historical knowledge, but her incredible range as a writer.
Some of the stories are indeed romantic "Fille de Joie" hilariously so,and "Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter" both stark and achingly poignant, but many speak of other aspects of life.


"Mary Murphy" tells of a laundress' plight through the eyes of a soldier who took the time to really pay attention to what he saw around him, and "Such Brave Men" paints a vivid picture of the privations faced by soldiers and their families on the Western frontier.
In "A Season for Heroes," we see illustrations of both familial and military devotion rendered so effectively that I could not help being deeply moved.
And I have to admire an author who can tell such a story in less thanpages!

These are, for the most part, quietly understated and plainspoken stories that give the reader wonderful portraits of what life must have looked like in the forts of the Western frontier in the years after the Civil War.
The moods range from hilarious to tragic, and I enjoyed this anthology very much, Excellent book of stories about the men of the frontier army and their women too, Carla Kelly is a word magician! Seriously, this collection of short stories is in my top ten favorite reads, Funny, heartbreaking, honest, informative, and just plain lovely, Carla Kelly wants to tell the truth, to discard myths about the U, S. Army during the Indian Wars, This collection of nine stories set in the era of the frontier army gives an entertaining and educational glimpse into a world not often explored in fiction.
"Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter" weaves a tale of an Irish woman who has no choice but to marry a man she barely knows after the death of her husband leaves her penniless.
She struggles with isolation and the cruelty of the others in the fort because of her rapid marriage, In the end, hers is a story of loss, love, and survival, But these are not all love stories, In "Mary Murphy" one soldier reflects about the hard life of a laundress, "A Season for Heroes" tells of a buffalo soldier named Ezra Freeman, a true hero to one officer's family, The collection concludes with "Jesse MacGregor, " The narrator, John, looks back on an Apache attack in the desert, After his detail's captain is killed and John is injured, authority falls to surgeon Jesse MacGregor, The account of their struggle to fight hunger, thirst, the elements, and of course, the Apaches, is mesmerizing, Kelly does not leave comedy out of her collection, "Fille de Joie" is a charming story of a married couple reunited after an almost twoyear separation, The wife is arrested after the two make too much noise during their afternoon tryst, She is charged with being a fille de joie, and the comedy ensues, Kelly's work will find an audience among those interested in feminist literature, American history, fiction, and nonfiction, This collection of short stories was very well compiled and touching, I lovedof them.
The rest weren't my favorite, Some of the romances were a bit too descriptive and intimate for me, I didn't like that./for this marvelous collection of short stories,
Although Kelly is primarily known as a romance writer, few of these stories are outright romances, But they are about men and women coping with life at frontier Army bases, with no glamorization of how tough that life was,
It is really hard to pick a favorite, though "Filie de Joie" and "Kathleen Flarety's Long Winter" will stick in my mind for a long time.

Excellent way to spend a chilly winter evening, This is a wonderful collection of short stories about women associated with the US Army wives, laundresses, mothers on the Western frontier in the late's.
Sounds drab, no It's not,

Kelly knows her history very well, and she manages to balance authenticity and the desperation of her characters' situations portrayed with a wonderful attention to the settings with humor and joy.


I checked this out because I enjoy Kelly's romances, and was curious to learn she'd written some very different historical fiction inspired by her work as a park ranger at Fort Laramie a few decades ago.
Although Kelly's romances are moving and fun, these stories were truly amazing, as well as educational, They deserve a much wider audience as some of the finest historical fiction I've read for years, loved this book. Short stories, great characters. I wish I could give this more than five, Truth. It is historical fiction that is more realistic than too much that is billed as nonfiction, Excellent, engrossing stories of what it was like in the U, S. Army in the west after the civil war, Not a clunker in the bunch, The stories are all around a woman washerwoman, wife, or other relative, who was in some way connected to the army, I would recommend it to anyone old enough to be able to read it, I have loved Carla Kelly's books from the first I picked up, oh, years ago, Her characters are wonderful to get to know and so hard to say goodbye to! As she is an historian and scholar, it is not surprising that her knowledge creates such a wealth of detail and paints such a striking portrait of life in her chosen moment of history, be it Regency England or early Western America.


But that's not why I devour her books again and again, She tells a brilliant story, with characters I wish I knew and events that are exciting, difficult, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes triumphant, She paints war honestly: it's brutality and horror as well as the raw beauty of bonds forged in such fire, Her warriors are soldiers, seamen, surgeons, even officers!, and they are not perfect but they are human!

I'm wandering far from reviewing this anthology of Carla Kelly's stories in my admiration for her writing and my love of her books once begun, her books suck me in relentlessly until the end!.
However, to return to the point, I must say I was thrilled to see this anthology when I first discovered it and could not wait to dig into it, rather daunting cover notwithstanding, and I was NOT disappointed.
I loved this book! As with all story collections, I had my favorites, but honestly, I loved them all!

Carla Kelly has a true gift for encapsulating a huge story in the microcosm of the relationships among a few characters, leaving the reader feeling she has had a full meal not a teaser of an appetizer and digesting the messages within long after dessert has been cleared away.
Not many authors are as deft with the short story as with the novella, or the novel, Carla Kelly is a master of all three, I subscribe to a listserve devoted to fiction and Readers' Advisory, Although my job is only peripherally involved with Readers' Advisory, I love watching this group in action, There are a lot of knowledgeable people on the list and they often find books for others that no one else would remember,

These folk recommend books every day to other readers, If I took all their suggestions, I would never complete the list, However, once in awhile a book will catch my attention and I will try to make time for it,

This is one of those books and it is well worth fitting into any reading life, I found it fascinating because Carla Kelly worked so hard to make this true to our history, I knew nothing about our army camps in the late's and now I know how difficult those posts were for both men and women.


Yes, these stories are romances, But they are so much more, They are a slice of American life and I believe that many people would find Kelly's stories fascinating, Carla Kelly at her best

Not a dog in the bunch, Though the first story in the book I had already read so it must be in one of her other books, Two of the stories were a little depressing but still well written, However they all had that Carla Kelly touch of spirit and humanity, Great reading. Spurwinning author Carla Kelly weaves a collection of nine stories that pay tribute to characters invariably overlooked in official records of the US Western Frontier Army recordsthe women and children.

From an Irish widow struggling through the longest winter of her life, to an expressive bride yanked from her lovers arms when taken for a “fille de joie,” to a post surgeons wife whose heart embraces both a daughter and a Siouxborn son, all are unforgettable.


The moments Ms, Kelly catches in her web are of waiting, loss, struggle, survival, endurance, and deep and abiding lovethe stuff of soul,
Heres to Carla Kelly! Historical fiction at its finest,
synopsis:
collection of short stories by the redoubtable carla kelly, they all focus in one way or another on the ladies of the army in the west,

what i liked: each story had a different tone, a different voice, my favorite was "katherine flaherty's long winter" about a woman whose husband dies, and she is propositioned by his superior officer, fortunately, one of the other men at the fort comes to her rescue and marries her, the story is the journey of them getting to know one another while surviving a long, hard winter,

what i didn't like: some of the stories felt too short, Pages/Introduction : Carla Kelly gives insight in how and where she got some of the story lines,
P./Such Brave Men : Very short but still a complete story,
P./We Shall Meet , but We Shall Miss Him : Sad story with some gruesome war details, I wonder , did C. K. made them up or did she find them somewhere written down in old letters or such
P,/Fille de Joie : Very Funny !
P,/Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter : A romantic story in a quiet way but it is also about survival and making the best of difficult circumstances,
P./The Gift : Just a nice story,
P./Casually at Post : About the love of an army surgeon and his wife for an orphaned Sioux baby , and God making his rounds between army posts.

P./Mary Murphy : Unforgettable.
P./A Season for Heroes : Times and warfare may change but the feelings of the ones waiting back home for their loved ones will never change.

P./Jesse MacGregor : A real eyewitness report Beware of the gory details in this story ! Librarian Note: There is than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Although Carla Kelly is well known among her readers as a writer of Regency romance, her main interest and first writing success is Western American fiction specifically, writing about Americas Indian Wars.
Although she had sold some of her work before, it was not until Carla began work in the National Park Service as a ranger/historian at Fort Laramie National Historic Site did she get serious about her writing career.
Or as she would be the first to admit, as serious as it gets, Carla wrote a series of what she now refers to as the Fort Laramie stories, which are tales of the men, women and children of the Indian Wars era in Western history.
Librarian Note: There is than one author in the Goodreads database with this name, Although Carla Kelly is well known among her readers as a writer of Regency romance, her main interest and first writing success is Western American fiction specifically, writing about America's Indian Wars.
Although she had sold some of her work before, it was not until Carla began work in the National Park Service as a ranger/historian at Fort Laramie National Historic Site did she get serious about her writing career.
Or as she would be the first to admit, as serious as it gets, Carla wrote a series of what she now refers to as the "Fort Laramie stories," which are tales of the men, women and children of the Indian Wars era in Western history.
Two of her stories, A Season for Heroes and Kathleen Flaherty's Long Winter, earned her Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, She was the second woman to earn two Spurs from WWA which, as everyone knows, is all you need to ride a horse, Her entire Indian Wars collection was published inas Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army, It remains her favorite work, The mother of five children, Carla has always allowed her kids to earn their

keep by appearing in her Regencies, most notably Marian's Christmas Wish, which is peopled by all kinds of relatives.
Grown now, the Kelly kids are scattered here and there across the U, S. They continue to provide feedback, furnish fodder for stories and make frantic phone calls home during the holidays for recipes, Carla Kelly is some cook, Carla's husband, Martin, is Director of Theatre at Valley City State University, in Valley City, North Dakota, Carla is currently overworked as a staff writer at the local daily newspaper, She also writes a weekly, award winning column, "Prairie Lite, "Carla only started writing Regencies because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars, which figures in many of her Regency novels and short stories, She specializes in writing about warfare at sea, and about the ordinary people of the British Isles who were, let's face it, far numerous than lords and ladies.
Hobbies She likes to crochet afghans, and read British crime fiction and history, principally military history, She's never happier than talking about the fur trade or Indian Wars with Park Service cronies, Her most recent gig with the National Park Service was at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site on the Montana/North Dakota border, Here's another side to this somewhat prosaic woman: She recently edited the fur trade journal of Swiss artist Rudolf F, Kurz theportion, and is gratified now and then to be asked to speak on scholarly subjects, She has also worked for the State Historical Society of North Dakota as a contract researcher, This has taken her to glamorous drudgery in several national archives and military history repositories, Gray archives boxes and old documents make her salivate, Her mantra for writing comes from the subject of her thesis, Robert Utley, that dean of Indian Wars history, He told her the secret to writing is "to put your ass in the chair and keep it there until you're done, " He's right, of course. Her three favorite fictional works have remained constant through the years, although their rankings tend to shift: War and Peace, The Lawrenceville Stories, and A Town Like Alice.
Favorite historical works are One Vast Winter Count, On the Border with Mackenzie and Crossing the Line, Favorite crime fiction authors are Michael Connelly, John Harvey and Peter Robinson, And that's all she can think of that would interest anyone, Carla Kelly is quite ordinary, except when she is sometimes prevailed upon to sing a scurrilous song about lumberjacks, or warble "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in Latin.
Then you m sitelink.