Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

Author: Jane Smiley

Narrator: Anna Fields

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-08-00

Publisher: Random House Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 114 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Lidie grows increasingly important to you as you follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, Jane Smiley is at her enthralling and enriching best.

Critic Reviews:

"An immensely appealing heroine, a historical setting converyed with impressive fidelity, a charming and poignant love story." (Publishers Weekly)

Members Reviews:

Teriffic book, outstanding production

I have been an avid audiobook listener for many years, and this is truly the best I've ever heard. The narrator is spectacular and the book is every bit as wonderful as the narration. I can't say enough good things about this production.

one of my favorites

I loved ths audio book. I listened to it while driving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and it made the time fly by. A great epic story perfect for anyone who likes historical fiction or anyone who was a tomboy.

Magnificent, perfect for these troubled times

Funny -- when this book first came out, I, being a confirmed Jane Smiley fan, bought it, a paper copy, but try as I might, I couldn't get into it. I abandoned the book maybe 50 pages in. A few years later, I was in the local public library and saw they had the book on cassettes. I needed a long audiobook, so I checked it out. What a difference!

Anna Fields makes all the difference -- hearing "Lidie" tell us her story makes it all the more personal and intimate. Ms. Fields voice is ideal, not too cultured, not too much of a twang, just the way I'd expect Lidie to sound. I just finished listening to "The All True Adventures" again, this time on Audible, and know I'll go back to this one over and over. It's a classic.

In an interview, Smiley said she wrote this book as a romance, which, I suppose, it maybe is, given the basic fact that Lidie and her just-met husband depart for the dangerous and embattled "KT" - Kansas Territories --on their wedding night, and one of the book's themes is their getting to know each other, literally.

But it isn't just the tale of the 'newlyweds -- newly-mets, in fact -- that's compelling. It's the story of the times, just before the "official" start of the War Between the States, when the "goose question" reigned supreme. The "goose question"? Back then, in the 1850's, in Missouri, Kansas and other 'border' states, the question of slavery was simply too hot to touch, too contentious to even pronounce the word. You couldn't come right out and ask someone what their politics were, for fear of starting a personal war, right then and there. So you used an euphemism instead, asking what their position on "the goose question" was -- and the answer better be right, with "right" depending where, specifically, you were standing. A wrong answer could -- and many times did -- get you killed.

Lidie's tale of what it was like to "settle" a new land -- a kind of "Little House on the Prairie", Kansas style.