OH, THOSE HARPER GIRLS! Kathleen Karr. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992, 192 pages. $16.
There are few novels for young adults about the Wild West. I don't mean books about crossing the plains to reach Oregon or California; I mean stories about the wily West where cowboys rule and stagecoaches are the means of transportation. "Oh, Those Harper Girls!" is a terrifically funny escapade of the family of Lily Harper and her five older sisters as they become involved in their father's zany money schemes in the rough-and-tumble 19th-century west.Imagine a father on a less-than-productive ranch with six girls. "We came mostly with the spring, one after the one, barely a year 'twist each of us: March, April, May, June, July - and then there was me, Lily." Combine that with the fact that he is a proverbial "wheeler-dealer," the taxes on the ranch are due and his daughters are the ones to carry out his plans. Add in a mother who wants her daughters to be young ladies, in word and deed, who nearly succeeds - except for Lily, who dresses in her father's discarded wardrobe.
The Harper girls get involved in cattle-rustling, a moonshine still and holding up a stagecoach. They are caught and jailed, taking the full blame for their unlucky father, "Extra money seems to be like these bananas. It ripens fast, then just gets thrown away."
The story of the Harper's outlandish follies reaches New York City and they are offered contracts to re-enact their escapades on the vaudeville stage. Negotiating their contracts so that they'll be able to pay the ranch expenses, the girls go off to the city on an extended circuit of dramas. They even avert a bank robbery there. "Lily's robber . . . revealed bristling mustaches and chin whiskers around a grimace of a mouth. `It was supposed to be a clean, simple job . . . '
" `The Harpers ain't no Eastern wilting lilies. If you'd caught our show at the Front Street Theater, you'd have known better.' "
Even though the story is told by Lily, Karr allows us to see each girl as an individual, some "hankering" after boyfriends, one a life on the stage and of course, Lily, only interested in the ranch. The end, of course, is a happy resolution for everyone; Mr. Harper can keep his Double H Ranch (which Lily will oversee) and Mrs. Harper will be making wedding dresses.
It's evident that the author knows the film industry well. "Oh, Those Harper Girls!" reads like an outline of a fast-paced movie script. Karr deftly describes the bleak ranch life and takes good-hearted swipes at femininity in the old Wild West.
Readers in grades 6-9 will delight in this novel that is spiced with Western slang and crisp dialogue.
- Marilou Sorensen is an associate professor of education at the University of Utah specializing in children's literature.