E.B. Moore's "An Unseemly Wife," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: An Unseemly Wife by E.B. Moore.

The entry begins:

An Unseemly Wife tells the story of Ruth and her land-obsessed husband, Aaron. He tore his family from a Pennsylvania farm, and against their Amish faith (they should have stayed separate), headed for Idaho in the mid-1800s where he believed great tracts of free land waited. Ruth, being a week overdue with their fifth child, resisted.

Never the less, Aaron loaded his enormously pregnant wife and four children, ranging in age from eleven down to three-year-old Esther, into a Conestoga wagon for the 2000-mile trek. On the trail, temptation abounded as the family faced prejudice and a myriad of ways to die.

Their survival depended on being part of the dreaded English community. The self-proclaimed moral leader of the group, Hortence, wore grey, not the fancy colors of other women, and as a preacher’s wife she seemed like-minded, if a bit overbearing. Another who crowded Ruth’s boundaries was Sadie a loud young woman dressed in men’s fringed pants and jacket. Dependence brought them both close, and forbidden friendships with English happened. They grew, even flourished, until prejudice and jealousies lead to betrayal, and the separateness Ruth believed would save their souls, proved catastrophic. This left the family abandoned on the trailside fighting for their lives.

In writing these characters, I tried to become each one, but being an actor wasn’t for me. No cameras, not even an author photo on the book’s cover.

Now, encouraged to think of the book as a movie, I find the actors with names and faces I know are too long in the tooth, basically too old or too dead. However, if they were alive and the right age, I’d cast Gregory...[read on]

Visit E.B. Moore's website.

The Page 69 Test: An Unseemly Wife.

My Book, The Movie: An Unseemly Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue