7. “True Women” by Janice Windle Woods: Featured Review

True Women by Janice Woods Windle

Reviewed by JoAnn S.

♥”Dear Lord,” she began.  “Thank you for life and for Texas and for tomorrow.”

True Women began as a cookbook and ended as a fictionalized account of Janice Windle’s family history from 1831-1946.  The main characters, Euphemia Texas Ashby King, Sarah McClure Branches, Georgia Woods Lawshe, and Bettie Moss King, were women of varying temperaments.  All showed skills, beliefs, and values that helped Texas survive the rough, rugged, war-torn times from the defeat at the Alamo, through the Indian wars and treaties, the Civil War and Reconstruction, until World Wars I and II.  Most of the story takes place in the region between Seguin and San Marcos.  The author describes the interactions of the main characters and other historical figures of the times as they meet the everyday challenges and calamities imposed by nature, politics, wars, and economics.

In a minority report given during an 1868 Reconstruction Convention, the group urged leaders not to allow the “True Women” of Texas to vote because of their “native modesty and inborn refinement of feeling.”  Euphemia and her friends privately laughed (Euphemia rarely smiled) as they took turns reading the document.  But their lives are a testament showing that the words were hollow and ill-conceived.  Sarah McClure expressed the contrast between the words in the document and the accomplishments of the women when she questioned, “Why is it men always have to go off to war?  They go off and we stay here where the hard part is.”

Has the spirit and tenacity of the “True Women” tradition been lost?  How readers answer this question, of course, depends on how they compare their lives with the the lives of the women in this book.

I think there is a made-for-tv movie based on this book which can be rented at the video store.