The Courtship of Eva Eldridge: A Story of Bigamy in the Marriage-Mad Fifties by Diane Simmons

437 Reviews limitations discussed above, however, mean a missed opportunity for the author to engage fully with the broader scholarly debate and also limit the scope of the author’s own conclusions. Kimberly Jensen Western Oregon University THE COURTSHIP OF EVA ELDRIDGE: A STORY OF BIGAMY IN THE MARRIAGEMAD FIFTIES by Diane Simmons University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 2016. Notes, bibliography, index. 272 pages. $19.95, paper. Bigamy. This word brings a smile to mind for many of us, perhaps we recall the 1950s comedy The Captain’s Paradise where Alex Guiness, the captain of the title, has a wife in each port on either end of his run. Perhaps it is a paradise for the bigamist, but to the unsuspecting victims it is no joke, rather a betrayal that can ruin lives. Diane Simmons did not choose to write about bigamy — it chose her when she was appointed executor for Eva Eldridge’s estate. As executor , Simmons was responsible for dealing with Eldrige’spossessionsandeventuallyfoundabox of 800 carefully bundled letters. As an awardwinning novelist, English professor, and reporter, Simmons was well qualified to take advantage of this windfall, although early on she resisted even reading them. It felt intrusive, but once she did she was hooked — they contained a story so remarkable and fascinating it transformed her into a detective. The book’s academic publisher lists the categories true crime and women’s studies on the back cover, but it might also have chosen sociology and psychology; Simmons found she needed to explore widely to make sense of the story she found. Eldridge’s mother, Grace, was a neighbor of Simmons’s in a rural eastern Oregon community . Eldridge, who was about twenty-five years older than Simmons, had left to work in wartime Portland before Simmons was born, but in the 1950s, Grace would often take her along when she visited her daughter who was living in Boise, Idaho. It was there that Simmons met Eldrige’s bigamist husband, although none of them then knew his secret at the time. Simmons only learned of it in the letters. While readers are aware of the bigamy from the book’s cover, Simmons does not address it in the first half of the book, which tells of Eldrige’s life in eastern Oregon as a teenager, her first courtship with a childhood beau who runs off to Canada to fight in World War II, her work in the Portland shipyards during World War II, and her courtship, marriage, and desertion with and by the handsome Vick in Boise. Readers share her puzzlement, if not her desperation when he disappears. Simmons reveals in Part 2 a letter from another wife that begins the detective story. Simmons cannot let it go and neither can the readers. How many wives were there? Why did Vick run off without a word, over and over again? Was he diagnosable? Why does Eva continue to love and long for her betrayer? Simmons hunts down Vick’s other wives and even their children, consults with psychiatrists, searches archives, and studies the letters in the box. This engaging read, entirely set in the Pacific Northwest, profiles an independent woman in an age that Simmons categorizes as marriagemad , who none-the-less manages to maintain her independence and survive despite betrayal. Readitasawarning,asapictureoftheNorthwest in an earlier time, or just for a good read. Sandy Polishuk Portland, Oregon WHITHER THE WATERS: MAPPING THE GREAT BASIN FROM BERNARDO DE MIERA TO JOHN C. FRÉMONT by John L. Kessell University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2017. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 120 pages. $29.95 paper. This attractive publication is effectively the illustrated companion to the author’s earlier biography of Miera and an interesting model ...

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