Bargain Bride Evelyn Sibley Lampman

Bargain Bride

Author: Evelyn Sibley Lampman
$14.99 1499
ISBN 9781948959711155 pages6 x 9 inch paperback
To Ginny, almost anything would be better than living with the miserly, good-for-nothing, distant cousins who had claimed her and all she possessed when her parents had died of fever during the wagon-train journey to Oregon Territory. At the age of ten they had married her off—for a very good price—to a much older farmer, because girls were in great demand since married men could take title to twice the amount of land the government allowed a bachelor. On her fifteenth birthday, kindly Mr. Mayhew came to claim his bride. Unfortunately, on that same day he died of a stroke and Ginny, the young Widow Mayhew, was left in possession of his well-built house and flourishing farm. This touching story, in which Ginny learns to fend off a stream of suitors who have their eyes only on her rich farmland, gives a vivid sense of life as it was during a brief period in our history when marriage was often considered a practical necessity instead of an affair of the heart. Written in 1977. Plumfield and Paideia has an insightful review.

To Ginny, almost anything would be better than living with the miserly, good-for-nothing, distant cousins who had claimed her and all she possessed when her parents had died of fever during the wagon-train journey to Oregon Territory.

At the age of ten they had married her off—for a very good price—to a much older farmer, because girls were in great demand since married men could take title to twice the amount of land the government allowed a bachelor. On her fifteenth birthday, kindly Mr. Mayhew came to claim his bride. Unfortunately, on that same day he died of a stroke and Ginny, the young Widow Mayhew, was left in possession of his well-built house and flourishing farm.

This touching story, in which Ginny learns to fend off a stream of suitors who have their eyes only on her rich farmland, gives a vivid sense of life as it was during a brief period in our history when marriage was often considered a practical necessity instead of an affair of the heart.

Written in 1977. Plumfield and Paideia has an insightful review.