Annamanda: A Novel of Courage

Bravery was required in the early 1800s frontier along the Mississippi River, and Annamanda’s courage helps her family to survive despite ferocious bears, “panthers,” Tecumseh’s ire, crop failures, roving bands of outlaws, and even the disputes between the many religions that formed and fell at the edges of the movement West. Following her preacher husband into Missouri’s wilds, Annamanda meets the strange Eremus Lodi, a wealthy, educated landowner whose demons isolate him from “proper folk,” and his African companion named O’Reilly, whose healing powers save several members of her family. Through danger and deprivation, doubt and wonder, Annamanda faces each trial with humble strength and humor, until the coming of the Great Earthquake of 1811 threatens to destroy all that she knows and loves. In Annamanda’s flight from the seemingly endless Great Shaking, she and her family will have to face a final horror known as The Beast that is unleashed in the deep forests of the Middle South. Full of frontier wisdom and humor, heart-stopping events, old-American religious factions, and the rollicking dialect of our early American ancestors, Annamanda is a novel of courage and character from the viewpoint of a most remarkable American pioneer.

Jo Houser Haring came from families much like those in Annamanda, early settlers who were among the founders and leaders in Stone County, Missouri. Haring is the author of The Founding Father, a novel, and Notes on the Refrigerator Door, a collection of humor compiled with her husband, Bob Haring. For 10 years, she wrote the humor column, A Pocketful of Wry, that delighted readers of many newspapers. Haring died from leukemia in 1991, leaving behind some of her light, her love, and her magnificent talent as a storyteller.