The Madigans

Six motherless sisters run more or less wild through Virginia City, Nevada, a Comstock silver town built on the slopes of Mount Davidson. Cecilia (called Sissy), sharp-tongued Irene, Kate, the twins Bessie and Florence, and small Frances are left mostly to themselves by a short-tempered father and an aunt who would rather not be disturbed. Michelson first ran these episodes in Century magazine as “Stories of the Nevada Madigans”, and the book keeps that shape: linked scenes rather than one continuous plot. She grew up in Virginia City herself, one of eight children, and the borrowing shows. What lifts it past period charm is how seriously she takes a child’s moral life, since Sissy’s private resolutions to be better keep collapsing under ordinary provocation, and the collapses are funny and exactly observed.