A Woman’s Place
In the last years of the 19th century, the subject of an unmarried woman joining a scientific expedition would have set tongues wagging in the drawing rooms of Eastern society.
But the main character of Letters from Yellowstone puts passion before propriety in this 226-page novel by Diane Smith.
Defying conventional behavior, A. E. Bartram, a Cornell medical student, travels cross country by herself to catalog the Rocky Mountain flora and fauna of Yellowstone National Park.
The year is 1898 before tourists, the railroad, local entrepreneurs and poachers destroy the picture of pristine nature found in this 3,468 acre park in northern Wyoming.
Not fazed by her less than warm welcome, amateur botanist Alexandria Elisabeth Bartram settles into camp, “with her own tent, bedding and other feminine necessities delivered (without any charge!) by a woman naturalist who considers herself a patron of the sciences”.
In one of his frequent letters home, expedition leader, H. G. Merriam, assures his mother, that Miss Bartram will be allowed to stay since she is, “slight of build so would not eat much”.
Besides sad-eyed Merriam, the field study is composed of a drunken agriculturist teaching his pet raven to talk, and the driver/guide who, “ain’t gonna haul no woman”.
Eccentric entomologist Daniel Peacock rounds out the short-staffed undertaking along with two undergraduates expecting a vacation, Stony and Rocky Cave, plus the mediocre Chinese cook, Kim Li.
Coping with “worn-out tents, ramshackle tables, make-shift equipment”, along with a freak springtime blizzard, Alex and her male cohorts collect and preserve specimens in earnest.
Tensions escalate when Smithsonian representative Philip Aber arrives threatening to close down the project, citing the presence of Alexandria, Merriam’s dismal leadership skills, the shocking lack of equipment and the Crow Indian family camped nearby.
But Miss Bartram proves her meddle, when she comes to the rescue of Professor Merriam after a 60-foot fall from a rocky ledge. Finding him bleeding and breathless, the female botanist creates a make-shift tourniquet and builds a crude shelter of tree limbs as the snow continues to fall and darkness quickly closes in around them.
Even though the pursuit of science has left Alexandria, “thin, brown, weary, her hair unkempt and hanging in limp ringlets around her face and down her back”, she refuses to return home with her stiff-necked Cornell mentor, Professor Lester King until the summer’s end.
In letters and telegrams to the outside world, the novel’s rag tag crew of scientists debate the role of science in society, learn from each other, chuckle at the raven’s antics, and find romance during their two-month stay in Yellowstone.
This bookclubber found the novel engaging, but one sided. Return letters from Professor Merriam’s mother and Alexandria’s parents would have heightened the conflict as well as filled in gaps in the reader’s knowledge.
As a great fan of another epistolary novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society 
True, Diane Smith’s choice to tell Alexandria’s story through out-going letters only might not please everyone, but this format allows us to peek into each character’s thoughts in turn.
Drawing from her 15-year stint as a science and environmental writer, Smith sprinkles scientific terms and Latin species names throughout which can become tiresome at times.
Thankfully, the author introduces topics such as wild life management, commercialization/exploitation of national parks and the woman’s place in the world of science with such a light hand that the novel’s flow is uninterrupted most of the time.
Also set in the western states in the late 1800s, Smith’s second novel deals with a paleontological expedition. Told through the main character’s journal, Pictures from an Expedition includes an ongoing feud over the discovery of a Triceratops skeleton and the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Readers who enjoyed Letters from Yellowstone rated Pictures from an Expedition as an even better work. In a recent interview, Ms. Smith revealed that her current project, tentatively entitled, Evolution, will also be set in Montana territory in the late 1800s.
Discussion Questions for Letters from Yellowstone can be found at: www.uspenguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/letters_from_yellowstone
