ATTIC WIFE

Biederman recounts the true story of a woman caught between worlds.

Agnes Young McAlpin was a Haida woman from Alaska at the turn of the 20th century. She was constantly pulled between the values of her community and Christian missionary attempts at assimilation. In 1899, she married the white dentist Kenneth McAlpin, who took her far away from her family and community to Butler, Pennsylvania. There, Kenneth struggled to begin his career, and Agnes suffered years of abuse, racism, and neglect from his relatives. After fleeing Kenneth and returning to Alaska with her youngest child, Agnes found her world altered by the death of her son Victor, who had stayed behind in Pennsylvania and died under mysterious circumstances. Her search to learn the truth about her son’s burial serves as the emotional core of the book. The story culminates in the couples’ 1906 divorce, where Kenneth claimed that his social standing had suffered from marrying a Native American woman. In the end, the case’s conclusion might surprise readers’ assumptions of 1906 America. In this meticulously researched story, Biederman integrates information from letters, church records, and newspapers to yield a richly detailed book that highlights Haida life, the assimilation projects of 1900s America, and the Alaskan gold rush. Biederman doesn’t shy away from the unavoidable realities of native-colonizer relationships, and she presents the consequences of racist policies unapologetically. Though it’s a nonfiction book, it often reads as a novel. Family drama, the divorce proceedings, and the social role of racism maintain a sense of suspense. As a historical drama, the work has a large cast that can be hard to keep track of, and the pacing can be uneven for the average reader. Historians will enjoy the shifts from detailed historical explanations to scenes of personal drama, but some readers may struggle with this back-and-forth. The book succeeds in rescuing Agnes Young McAlpin from obscurity and allowing her divorce case to be a lens through which we view racism, native-colonizer relationships, and domestic abuse.

A portrait of Progressive-era America that has much to teach us.