Mostly I don't bother doing book reviews unless it's a good book, and I want to recommend it to others. On this book, however, I can't be completely enthusiastic. To set the context, this is a YA novel about life on a Montana homestead during the First World War. The author decided to write this book after discovering that her grandmother actually held a homestead claim in Montana during this era.
Hattie Brooks was, therefore, a real person, and some of the events in the story are taken from actual events that took place at the time. The portrayal of frontier life is very well done, and you really do get a sense of just how hard it was for people to "Prove Up" (In order to keep your property, you had to build certain things on the land and lay a certain amount of fence. You also had to earn enough to afford the fees) their land claims. I was especially fascinated by the story because my own great-grandmother was almost exactly the same age as the main character, and she probably lived much the same life.
The incredibly frustrating part about the book comes with the author’s decision to veer away from the real facts. That is, she decides not to end the story as it really ended for her grandmother. Why, you might ask, if she's gone to all the trouble to be realistic, would she then slip over into complete fiction? Because, she says, she wanted to be authentic! She claims that her grandmother's story was unusually successful for the times, so she had to "correct" for that to remain realistic. Does this make any sense to you at all? Personally, I want to shake her! A completely non-fiction story about a person who perseveres against all odds is a very good story indeed! In short, this is a great read if you just imagine the ending as it really happened.
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