author

Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe

d. 1920

Best known for a vivid memoir of frontier army life, this American writer turned letters from remote western forts into a lively firsthand record of the post–Civil War West. Her book remains valued for its everyday detail, its sharp eye for landscape and people, and an early documented use of the name "Buffalo Soldiers."

1 Audiobook

Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888

Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888

by Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe

About the author

Born in Watertown, New York, in 1846, Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe later married U.S. Army officer Fayette Washington Roe and followed him to a series of military posts in the American West. Those years gave her the material for the writing she is remembered for today.

Her best-known work, Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888, grew out of letters describing life at forts in places such as Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. Rather than focusing on battles alone, she wrote about travel, weather, isolation, social life, and the people around the posts, which gives the book much of its lasting charm.

Roe died on May 6, 1920. Readers still return to her work for its clear, personal view of frontier military life and for the way it captures a changing American West through everyday experience.