The Prairie Bride

Catalog Note: Prairie Bride; or, The Squatter's Triumph This frontier adventure by Mrs. Henry J. Thomas (Beadle and Adams dime novel, 1880s) opens with settler Andrew Hosmar discovering his pre-empted Iowa land cabin occupied by claim-jumper Bill Larkins. After a violent confrontation erupts—with Larkins's wife joining the fray with a broomstick—gunfire startles Hosmar's team into a runaway. The wagon crashes into a prairie slough, trapping the family waist-deep in water. Rescued by Squire Boker and young Mr. Clark, the party finds refuge at Boker's hospitable homestead, where Mrs. Boker provides dry clothes and supper. The narrative introduces Annie, a refined young woman traveling with the Hosmar family who was born in October 1835 and anticipates 1853 with particular eagerness, suggesting a coming-of-age plotline. The fragmentary text breaks mid-sentence at the supper scene.