Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman - Tapa blanda

"This is a charming book - both as to manner and matter. For the first, it has the simplicity of truth combined with a vivid descriptive power. For the rest the author has drawn upon a rich fund of experience as a subaltern's wife who 'followed the drum' with her husband for thirty-three years. Tales of campaigns, of forced marches, of bloody battlefields are not rare, but the many instances of wifely fortitude and personal sacrifice through all the vicissitudes of military service on the frontier are seldom recorded. Therefore Mrs. Summerhayes' contribution to the literature of camp and garrison is welcomed as a chronicle of 'the days of the Empire' vanished from sight, but dear to memory." -Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States

"The book is such a straightforward, simple story, of how a refined woman lived through almost incredible difficulties and hardships at desert-posts, that is has found a demand far outside the circle of fellow campaigners, and hence has been reprinted. It is, indeed, a narrative rarely surpassed in that 'human interest' which is the staple of our best books." -Book Review Digest

"In our time when we can fly across the world in a day and cross the breadth of the North American continent in a few hours, it is wonderful to read a book that reminds us what it was like to live in the Southwest nearly a century-and-a-half ago — or, indeed, even to travel there. When Martha Dunham Summerhayes, a young Army wife, and her older Civil War veteran husband needed to get there from his first posting at Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory’s Cheyenne, it was no simple matter....What she had found there was aridity and cactuses and the ubiquitous rattlesnakes that necessitated 'buffalo robes under our mattresses and around them a hair lariat, ‘Snakes won’t cross over that.' No wonder she writes, 'I did not like these desert places, and they came to have a horror for me.' Not surprising for one whose notion of the desert came from the eponymous novel by the French writer Pierre Loti. However, with time, she came to appreciate its strange attractions and even to admire aspects of the American Indian culture she observed....A delightful glimpse into a past era." -The Washington Times

"We take pleasure in recommending to our readers Mrs. Summerhayes' delightful book 'Vanished Arizona,' as a classic on the interesting subject." -The Magazine of History

"Martha Summerhayes tells of the perilous journeys over desert and mountain roads, and of their constant fear of the Indians. Upon returning to Arizona years later they found their Arizona vanished. Hence her title 'Vanished Arizona,' 1908. No volume gives in so entertaining a manner the perplexities of the women's side of army encampments." -Mary G. Boyer, "Arizona in Literature," 1970