author
Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe
d. 1920
A sharp-eyed memoirist of the American frontier, she turned years of army life in the West into vivid, personal writing. Her best-known book offers a rare view of military posts, travel, and daily life from an officer’s wife’s perspective.
1 Audiobook
Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888
by Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe
About the author
Born Frances Marie Antoinette Mack, Frances M. A. Roe was an American writer whose life was closely tied to the western frontier in the late nineteenth century. She married U.S. Army officer Fayette Washington Roe in 1871 and accompanied him to posts across the West, experiences that became the heart of her writing.
Her best-known work, Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888, grew out of letters describing life at forts in places including Colorado and the wider frontier. The book is valued for its lively, firsthand picture of travel, military family life, and the landscapes and communities she encountered.
Roe died on May 6, 1920. Today she is remembered for preserving an unusually personal account of frontier army life, written with the immediacy of someone who saw it day by day.