6 h 25 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 6 h 25 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when love carries a city woman into a land where comfort gives way to weather, distance and work?
In Arthur Stringer's The Prairie Wife, a young woman leaves the comforts of city life for marriage on the open prairie of western Canada. Used to streets, friends and conversation, she enters the wide wheat country with habits that no longer fit. Love brings her west, but making a home asks more of her.
The story stays close to the heroine's thoughts, letting you meet this harder life through her doubts, humor and surprise. Weather, seasons and space press upon her marriage as surely as daily work. At its heart is a personal question: how do two people build a life together when their surroundings test them?
What you’ll discover
- Two worlds meet See familiar city comforts set against the demands of life on the open prairie.
- Love beyond the beginning Follow a marriage in which affection must meet the pressures of work and distance.
- A land that matters Discover how weather, seasons and wide spaces shape the people who live among them.
- A warm personal voice Stay close to a heroine whose doubts and humor bring an unfamiliar world nearer.
- A gentler reading pace Settle into a story that gives room to feelings, adjustment and the work of marriage.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy witty first-person voices, pioneer life on the Canadian prairie, warm marriage stories, and diary-style novels full of weather and work.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Chaddie chooses marriage before love
- A home grows through small acts
- Danger reveals Chaddie's quick thinking
- Friendship leaves room for suspicion
- Silence turns company into conflict
- Jealousy makes room for pity
- Marriage needs closeness and elbow room
- Love is work as well as feeling
Who’s who
- Chaddie McKailA quick-witted American who loses her fortune and marries a farmer. She wants freedom and love, and she tells everything to a friend named Matilda Anne.
- Duncan McKailAlso called Dinky-Dunk, a serious Scotch Canadian wheat grower who bets everything on his crop and wants to make a home worthy of his wife.
- OlieThe silent Swedish hired man with a frost-split nose, shy of women, loyal to the household, and quietly devoted to Chaddie.
- Percival Benson WoodhouseA thin, polite Oxford gentleman who buys a ranch from misleading photographs. He is lonely, impractical, and eager for good talk and kindness.
- Olga SarristoA tall Finnish farm worker who drives oxen, speaks little, and fascinates Chaddie with her calm strength and mystery.
- Terry DillonAn Irish hired man and former soldier, neat and warm-hearted, who loves detective novels and tells ghost stories with relish.
- Matilda AnneChaddie's distant friend and the person to whom all the entries are addressed, a calm listener who steadies her.
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- Large print hardcover
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The Prairie Wife in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
The Prairie Wife
by Arthur Stringer · 1915
A New York heiress, newly broke, marries a wheat farmer and lands in a tin-patched shack on the Canadian prairie.
Medium level2–5 hours to read2 languages
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In short
What would you do if a single cable turned you from an heiress into a beggar? Chaddie McKail, a lively young American, reads that news at Monte Carlo.
The Prairie Wife at a glance
- Reading time
- About 3 h 20 min2 h 40 min fast, 4 h slow
- Length
- 48,100 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1915by Arthur Stringer
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A beggar and a bride in one week
The book opens in midair. Chaddie McKail has just married Duncan Argyll McKail, and she writes to Matilda Anne to explain how. She tumbled into marriage before she had time to fall in love.
The backstory comes fast. At Monte Carlo a cable says a revolution in Chile has wiped out the family's nitrate concessions. Her fiance, Count Theobald Gustav Von Guntner, has an aunt, the baroness, who speaks so pointedly about international marriages that Chaddie takes it as a dismissal.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1915
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 10 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Stringer, Arthur. The Prairie Wife. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-prairie-wife.
Stringer, A. (2026). The prairie wife. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-prairie-wife (Original work published 1915)
Stringer, Arthur. The Prairie Wife. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-prairie-wife.
@book{stringer2026prairie,
author = {Stringer, Arthur},
title = {The Prairie Wife},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-prairie-wife},
note = {First published 1915}
}
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What is The Prairie Wife about?
It follows Chaddie McKail, a lively American who marries a wheat farmer named Duncan and moves to a tiny shack on the Canadian prairie. She records a year of work, weather, quarrels and growing love.
Who is Matilda Anne in The Prairie Wife?
Matilda Anne is Chaddie's faraway friend and the person she addresses in her entries. Chaddie says she may never send them, but writing to her keeps her steady in the lonely prairie.
Is The Prairie Wife a true story?
It is a novel by Arthur Stringer, not a memoir. Stringer was Canadian-born and drew on the farming world of western Canada, but Chaddie, Duncan and the others are invented characters.
The author
Arthur Stringer
1874–1950 · Canadian novelist and screenwriter
Arthur Stringer (1874–1950) was a Canadian novelist, poet, and screenwriter. He was born in London, Ontario, and later lived in the United States. He wrote The Prairie Wife, published in 1915, and other novels, as well as poetry and film scripts. He died in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.
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