Happy Tuesday everybody!
So excited about this book! Do you ever read a historical book and think wow that was really interesting, but I’m sure glad I did not live back then? That was me with this book, I was definitely born in the right century!
My Thoughts
Olivia Hawker’s descriptive storytelling Whisked me away to 1870s Wyoming. Gritty and raw this is a tale about resilience, acceptance, and forgiveness. Two families living on the Wyoming Prairie with their nearest neighbors over 20 miles away. When the husband of one family and the wife of another are caught in a compromising position. One man is killed and the other man is sent to jail, leaving the women Cora and Nettie Mae to pick up the pieces. Life on the frontier is hard and these women have to find a way past their grief, guilt, and hurt and help each other survive.
The strength of the story was in these characters. They will tug at your heart strings, you will cry with them, you will sweat with them, you will laugh with them, and you’ll pray with them. The main focus of the story for me was Beulah. Beulah was such a free spirit with a spark of magic. This was a quiet understated story that was loosely based on the author’s own family history. Sometimes it’s just nice to cozy up with a good book! An old fashion well told story full of colorful characters and descriptive writing that envelops you.
This book in three emojis: 💪🏻 👩🏼🌾 🙏🏻
*** Big thanks to Lake Union for my copy of this book ***
About the Book
From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.
Wyoming, 1876. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.
Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.
Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.
Berit Talks Books 