While the story is fascinating, I find the book to be very badly written. The author's writing style is so heavy-handed that the dialogue and narration aren't genuine at all. I agree with another review that the dialogue and inner thought process of Clara is written in a very modern style - with ...
This was a beautiful, gently told story. I felt nourished and uplifted all through it. I am not a gardener and don't have a lot of patience...so I gained a great respect for the gentle persistence it takes to create beauty in a flower garden. I also was encouraged by her story of repetitive flood...
I'm a real Jane Kirkpatrick fan, but this is not one of her best. Jessie is young and a photographer with dreams of owning her own studio. It's the early 1900's and her mentor has complicated her life by also becoming a man she loves but can't have due to his already being married. The story chro...
Another excellent historical novel by Kirkpatrick about Joseph and Jane Sherar, a couple who made a huge impact on the settlement of Oregon near Multnomah Falls. Based on historical characters and events, A Sweetness to the Soul recounts the captivating story of young, spirited Oregon pioneer Jan...
This book is the first in a series of three about a young woman from a German-American religious colony in Missouri in the mid 1800’s. The group migrated to Oregon in search of a place of secure separatism. They had much in common with the Amish or Mennonite societies but there were notable diffe...
Master storyteller? Time will tell us that as history means the writing is behind the author. The writer passes on. The writing remains and gets termed "master of the genre" "classic author", etc. Jane Kirkpatrick will be one of those termed a master storyteller of historical fiction involved dee...
This is book one of the Kinship and Courage Series; book 2 is No Eye Can See; book 3 is What Once We Knew. I was captivated during each one, hardly able to put them down. I awoke early, stayed up late.Historically accurate, with vivid details, dynamic characters, deep themes, real conflict! Be...
In the second installment of the Kinship and Courage series, the tale continued for Suzanne Culver and the rest of the widows who lost their husband from the cholera epidemic on the Oregon Trail. For all of them, they bonded like family and became closer friends, when they journeyed to California...
Jessie rarely had time for anything but work. Mr. Steffes had accepted her suggestion that she clean his shop at least three times a week. Her mother was happy she’d gotten her nickel back and earned more to boot. On those days, Jessie still had extra laundry, as her aprons were always covered wi...
She also inspected almshouses along the way. The South gave her solace. She loved the scents of magnolia and jasmine, the thick spanish moss hanging from the branches of so many trees. The beauty and orderliness of the sweeping plantations appealed to her sense of propriety, but now she felt guil...
Letitia heard that a child lay ill with typhoid and another had been run over by a wagon but had been saved by the soft mud sinking him beneath the wheels. Heavy rains take one child; another is saved by the same downpour. Doc Hawkins had set the two broken bones. Letitia heard the hacking of a c...
I was at my father’s home.“We could have time together, all of us. We’ll go together, as a family.”“I’ll not have you steal them into that country, not with that unpredictable Warren. That ‘pass’ he supposedly knows of, dangerous, if it even exists. He won’t even make it. You’ll arrive in The Dal...