Divorce: An American Tradition
A tedious history of divorce in the US from Puritan--yes, Puritan--times. Riley (History/Univ. of Northern Iowa) is the author of several scholarly books on frontier women. Her earlier research must have turned up anecdotal material on frontier divorces that led her to compile this volume. Unfortunately, with a bibliography and footnotes that are virtually 25% of the book, it is little more than a compilation of statutes, statistics, and rather dry excerpts from court records. Records do go back before the Declaration of Independence (a ``divorce petition of great magnitude,'' she notes) to the early 1600's and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As the frontier moved west, the percentage of divorces increased, to one divorce in 15 marriages by 1888. Calls for reform came both from those who wanted to make divorce more difficult and those who wanted to make it easier. Divorces continued to escalate until today, when half of US marriages end in divorce. A rather eloquent epilogue recommends that Americans accept the fact of divorce and lend their efforts both to learning more about marriage and easing the aftereffects of divorce on spouses and children. Informative, but Riley should have made the central text as readable as the epilogue. --Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.