An astonishing true story for your holiday (or whenever)

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and their Last-chance Journey Across America, by Elizabeth Letts

The set-up: In 1954 sixty-three-year-old Annie Wilkins of Minot, Maine gets the bad news that her tuberculosis isn’t expected to resolve. Her physician recommends she live the rest of her life—an expected two years—in the county charity home. It’s fair to say Annie is plum broke. She can’t afford the back taxes on the struggling farm she inherited.

So, like anybody about to launch an astounding endeavor, Annie Wilkins uses the last of her money to buy cucumber seeds. She grows and sells the cucumbers, sells the farm to the neighbor for $54 and buys the cheapest horse she can find, neverminding that she hasn’t ridden a horse in 30 years. Annie, her horse Tarzan, and her dog Depeche Toi set off for California. As Letts says (in an interview I’ll implore you to watch below), not only did she not have the tools we have today, she didn’t have the tools available in 1954—no map, no flashlight, not much of a plan. But she had the gumption to get going.

This book is for you if you enjoy astonishing true stories about real people pursuing unconventional feats. A few that come to mind include: A Woman of No Importance (Sonia Purnell); The Last American Man (Elizabeth Gilbert, yep, that one), or Brave the Wild River (Melissa L. Sevigny).

A bonus of Letts’ account is a healthy dose of how American life was changing around this time. Car travel was shifting from two-lane roads that connected centers of small towns to highways that went around them. Television was becoming more common in people’s homes. Most amazingly, people opened their barns and homes to a stranger passing through town. Annie started her journey with $32 in her pocket. She asked people (complete strangers) if she could keep Tarzan in their barn overnight. Often the people who let Tarzan stay in the barn put up Annie and her dog inside. It wasn’t long before local media, then the AP, picked up her journey. After that, towns anticipated her arrival. You would not BELIEVE how many towns sent the Boy Scouts to greet her and hosted a parade to welcome her. So many parades.

Another bit of surprising hospitality: small town police stations accommodated visitors who didn’t have a place to stay in empty jail cells. And, they offered a hot meal.

My friend Jean recommended The Ride of Her Life. I checked it out from the library. It lingered on my shelf. Weeks later, when I got halfway through, we exchanged a flurry of voice memos regarding our mutual, unmitigated enthusiasm for Annie’s story. Jean also shared this 2022 interview with Letts on the occasion of the paperback launch. There we learn Letts is a horsewoman herself and hear a few anecdotes from the ten thousand miles she traveled researching the book (the last leg of her trip was February 2020 (😳)).

The thing that’s stuck with me about the story, and that Letts emphasizes in the interview, is neighborliness. Since reading it I’ve had conversations with people older than me who remember instances of men turning up at their homes and their mothers (or in one case my grandmother herself) making them lunch. And then both people moved on with their days. Letts notes that as a white woman, Annie had more freedom to approach strangers than black or brown Americans would have had. She also notes that especially the national media quietly adjusted elements of Annie’s life—for example referring to her as Widow Wilkins, when in fact she was twice divorced and had a short stint as a vaudeville performer.

This was another book in which I read every word of the author’s note and the acknowledgments. After mopping up my tears the Saturday I finished, I set about ordering copies for friends, friends’ parents, and at least one person I haven’t been in touch with for years who will love this story.

Have you read Annie’s story? If not, join me on the Annie bandwagon! Plenty of room.

What book will you be talking about this week?

Happy reading.

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Letts’ collection of Annie photos

Bookshop link to Ride of Her Life

Further astonishing stories:

https://www.soniapurnell.com/a-woman-of-no-importance

My post about Brave the Wild River (Melissa L. Sevigny)

https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/the-last-american-man/