Book Reviews
Historical Novel Society
Book Review by
Amanda Cockrell
Six Weeks in Reno
Written by Lucy H. Hedrick
In 1931, Nevada, already a popular divorce destination, lowered its residency requirement to six weeks, and a flood of unhappy women took the train west to wait out their residency for a chance to start over. Evelyn Henderson leaves behind an appalled sister, a withdrawn husband, and a marriage that has effectively ceased to exist. She has no idea what she will find at the other end, but anything has to be better than this. Evelyn meets a crew of other “six-weekers,” and we watch through her eyes as they all undergo changes in personality, ambition, and sense of self – some for the better, others tragically. The first-person, present-tense narrative serves well to make an unsettling, sometimes frightening experience immediate. The time, the beginning of the Depression, is well researched and skillfully woven into the narrative. The landscape of Nevada itself is as much a character as any of the women – a stark contrast to Evelyn’s home in New Jersey – offering both danger and possibility. The only jarring note is the decision to use the terms “Native American” and “African American,” designations that did not come into use until decades later. If the author (or a heavy-handed sensitivity reader) felt that her audience would be put off by the use of “Indian” and “Negro” (the polite language of 1931), better choices would have been either to include an explanatory author’s note or to indicate ethnicity by description. The otherwise authentic sense of time and place dissolves every time one of those terms appears. In all other respects, this is a terrific book with well-developed characters who we can root for all the way through their six-week metamorphosis.
National League of American Pen Women
Six Weeks in Reno
Author: Lucy H. Hedrick, Greenwich Branch
Book Review by
Laura Jo Brunson
It's 1931, and in Reno, Nevada, they call women like Evelyn Henderson "six-weekers." As America struggles with the grim and desperate realities of the Great Depression, these are women who have enough money, or whose husbands do, for them to travel to Reno. There, they live for six weeks to achieve their shared goal: to escape a failed marriage through an uncontested divorce. Nevada has cut its longstanding six-month-residency requirement to six weeks, and business is booming. Author Lucy H. Hedrick tells the story of "Six Weeks in Reno" through Evelyn's journal, which opens with Evelyn boarding a Reno-bound train in Penn Station. A woman of standing in her hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey, she wants to put her loveless marriage of 20 years behind her. She is taunted by her sister's disapproval and thoughts about what her friends and neighbors will think. On the train, Evelyn encounters other Reno-bound women seeking divorce. Tessa's husband is a rounder. Beatrice's husband has many lovers and is paying for the divorce. Madeline's husband is violent, and Flo's is mentally ill. Evelyn has two children in college and a backstory that involves an uninterested, older husband, who's been unemployed for 15 years and, she recently discovered, is gay. It's not a story she can share, but she seems to be empathetic with the situations her travel companions experience. Evelyn settles into the Flying N Ranch and bonds with her housemates. Reno, dubbed the Biggest Little City in the World, offers most of the women an intoxicating taste of newfound freedom: horseback riding by day and the attention of dance-hall cowboys by night. While some six-weekers imbibe in the freedom and Evelyn does enjoy herself, she spends the six weeks in meaningful reflection that empowers her to reenter her world unfettered and live on her own terms. "Six Weeks in Reno" is a good read and includes a set of book club questions to start the conversation.