("The Broidered Garment:  The Love Story of Mona Martinsen and John G. Neihardt” by Hilda Martinsen Neihardt, University of Nebraska Press, 320 pages, cloth, $29.95.) John Neihardt, Nebraska poet laureate and author of "Black Elk Speaks" and "A Cycle of the West," was also a family man. In "The Broidered Garment," Neihardt's daughter Hilda tells the family stories: Of the privileged lives of her mother's family, the Martinsens; of the Neihardts' humble origins on the American frontier; of Mona Martinsen and John Neihardt's  meeting and of their long marriage.

In fall 1907, Mona was studying sculpture with Auguste Rodin in Paris when her mother sent her a book of poems, "A Bundle of Myrrh."  The deep emotions expressed in the poetry struck a chord in the lonely young American artist, and she wrote to the poet,  John Neihardt, in Bancroft, Neb. Charmed by Mona's earnest praise of his work, John responded; the two found much in common, and the letters flew back and forth between Paris and Bancroft. As John recalled that correspondence, "We told each other everything . . . we held nothing back."

By late November 1908, John Neihardt and Mona Martinsen were married — meeting for the first time as Mona alighted from the train in Omaha the day before the wedding.

Upon her marriage, Mona essentially abandoned a career as a sculptor, but continued to produce some work throughout her life —much of it in some way supportive of her husband, the poet. She said, "John's work is greater than my own” and "John is the gold; I am the alloy."  Mona's bust of Neihardt stands in the Hall of Fame at the Nebraska capitol.

"The Broidered Garment" —with  its "love story" subtitle — contains material for a good romance, but it has flaws. Much of the first two-thirds of  the book is devoted to long and often tediously detailed accounts of John and Mona's parents and grandparents — how they met, where they lived, where they traveled and what they wore. The author includes many conversations she couldn't have heard — between her grandparents, between Mona and her acquaintances in Paris and between Mona and John after they finally meet. 

Yet these details bear the authenticity of familiar family stories told to children or gathered from old letters and family archives  —or, for the Neihardts, stories originating in dreams. It would be helpful — both  for historians and for casual readers — to  know the sources of such details, but there are no footnotes or endnotes.  In the book's foreword, Hilda Neihardt frankly admits to using "sympathetic imagination to provide needed bridges and to 'flesh out' known events." 

From an admiring daughter's point of view, Hilda also repeats familiar stories about John Neihardt, including his modest beginnings in northeast Nebraska, his determination to write poetry, his interest in the West and his sympathy for Native Americans. What will be new to many readers is the story of John and Mona and their family.

Hilda was born in 1916 — the third of the Neihardts' four children. The book's title comes from a poem, "Child's Heritage,"that John wrote in about 1911. Though the child in the poem may live in humble surroundings, “The broidered garment of the soul/Shall keep thee purple-clad!" 

Hilda describes the constant struggle to support a family on a writer's pay — an effort that often required John to be away from home, leaving the care of the children to Mona. 

But life wasn't all a struggle.   Hilda also describes how Mona sought official sanction to make home-brewed beer for John during Prohibition, and she remembers the pleasure Mona found in playing violin in a "Cottage Orchestra."

John was often a playful father and grandfather, writing "naughty-boy" limericks, for example, that demonstrated a sense of humor less apparent in his more celebrated writings. But on the whole, poetry was a serious matter. Hilda describes the children's walks in the woods with their father: "And those moonlit or starlit nights were embroidered by the poetry he declaimed"— his stride matching the cadence of such heroic verse as a Tennyson poem about King Arthur or a play by Sophocles in the original Greek — “and the impassioned, warm baritone of his voice was good to hear." 

Taken for what it is, a  fondly told story of the lives of John and Mona Neihardt,"The Broidered Garment" is a fine addition to the Neihardt canon and in the spirit of other work by Hilda Neihardt, who died in 2004. She did much to champion her father's work and reputation, performing readings of his poetry, accompanied by her son Robin on classical guitar; writing "Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow: Personal Memories of the Lakota Holy Man and John Neihardt"; and editing "Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family." 

"The Broidered Garment" completes this work as only a member of the Neihardt family could have done it.

Carolyn Johnsen teaches in the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications.  She treasures her autographed copy of John Neihardt's "A Cycle of the West."