Between Earth and Sky

Years ago, Abby Reynolds was given the letters written by her great-great-grandmother who traveled from Virginia to New Mexico in a covered wagon just after the Civil War. Now, at a crossroads in her life, Abby reads Abigail's letters and follows her ancestor's trail westward where she seeks to understand the other woman's life in a land that was so foreign to her family, they all but forgot her. Between Earth and Sky records two journeys--Abby's search of New Mexico where she meets an old Hispanic woman whom she shares a strange kinship with, and Abigail's travels through Indian territory into a life filled with danger, forbidden love, children she could not have imagined, and always the wide arc of the sky and the strange but magical earth that lies beneath it. Part epistolary, part narrative, Between Earth and Sky forms a love letter to the land itself and to those who chose to people it. ϡ쯦랠 Abigail and her family have left the post-Civil War South and joined the mass immigration west in search of land and a more prosperous future. After the long and dangerous journey from Virginia to New Mexico in a covered wagon, they arrive, only to face far greater hardships: the ever-present danger of Indians, the constant search for food and basic necessities, and the loneliness and desolation of living on the plains. Abigail's remarkable story is told in Between Earth and Sky, an epistolary novel that vividly illustrates the strange, dangerous, and magical land of New Mexico. For more than sixty years - from 1867 to 1930 - Abigail writes to her beloved sister about her three children, her family's struggle to live among the Mexicans and Indians, and their efforts to create a farm in the desert. Her fears and apprehension are gradually replaced by awe for the dramatically different landscape of the Southwest, which she sketches and paints with growing enthusiasm for both the art and the subject. Abby Reynolds, Abigail Conklin's great-great-granddaughter, introduces the letters that comprise this compelling and moving pioneer story. Abby was too young to understand the significance of the letters when they were passed down to her. Now, years later and at a crossroads in her life, she begins reading the letters and their story of hardship and triumph. The letters inspire Abby to follow in her namesake's footsteps and leave behind her life in Virginia to pursue a new one in New Mexico. Abby finds a love for the land and people in this place between earth and sky just as Abigail did more than one hundred years earlier. A woman's account of life on the frontier, told in letters to her sister. In 1867, Abigail Conklin, her husband and their children head west in a wagon train to New Mexico. The letters describe the primitive conditions, the back-breaking work, and the constant presence of death, whether from of nature or Indians. She also describes the raising of children, racial and religious tensions, and the stark beauty of the Southwest