With these ties of kinship and with the most startling coincidences of time and place that she unearths she integrates our Pacific Northwest history. This is the second fine service performed with this book.
"McDonald of Oregon," then, has a grand conception underlying it. It contains an important piece of research and in it we have a summation of Oregon's history from "the eternally feminine" point of view. The novice in Oregon history will be bewildered by its amazing flights and transitions. Some day, however, when all landmarks in Oregon history are matters of common knowledge and when its chief incidents are household stories, this book will be widely read with the delight that attend the revelation of unnumbered relationships before unperceived.
These "gleanings from a pioneer woman's physician's life" are declared to have a two-fold purpose:
First, to assist in the preservation of the early history of Oregon; second, through the story of her life and selections from her writings "to show how the pioneer woman labored and struggled to gain an entrance into the various avenues of industry and to make it respectable to earn her honest bread by the side of her brother, man."
Dr. Owens-Adair has earned the deepest gratitude of every true Oregonian in making this record of her life. This candid and graphic account of the intimate life experiences of so representative a pioneer woman is simply invaluable. It is the story of a life keyed to the pitch of heroism in the pursuit of a noble aim. Withal it is in a style that makes it delightful reading.
Following the autobiography and taking up nearly three-fourths of the book are found letters from her friends, Jesse Applegate and Stephen F. Chadwick, biographical sketches of many of the leading pioneers of Clatsop County, Dr. Owens-Adair's contributions to the press in promotion of the causes of public health and prohibition and discussions of physical culture, woman suffrage, heredity and social welfare. There is pervading the volume from beginning to end the finest spirit and enthusiasm as a champion of large and advanced ideas that affect our destiny as a nation. So much of moral tonic is in the book that a second edition, of appropriate compass and arrangement, adapting it to a wider public, would be highly desirable.
