Beadle's Dime Novels No. 35: East and West

About this issue

Beadle's Dime Novels No. 86 (1861) contains two serials. "The Riflemen of the Miami" by Edward S. Ellis, a frontier romance set in southern Ohio during conflicts between settlers and Shawnee tribes, centers on forest-dwelling riflemen and features a woman whose youth and beauty drive an absorbing drama. The second serial, "East and West; or, The Beauty of Willard's Mill" by Mrs. Frances Fuller Barritt, concerns a mill owner's conflicts with speculators in a frontier settlement. When land speculators—whose lots have flooded—attempt to force the miller to destroy his dam, one of his mill-hands, Nat Arnold, defends the family's honor against crude jests. The narrative introduces Minnie Willard, "the Prairie Fawn," the miller's dreamy daughter, and develops around a card game where the gamblers stake the mill's fate. A visitor hints at a letter bringing a city cousin to the remote settlement.