Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.īelly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. (acknowledgments, author’s note, further reading) (Fiction. This fine offering may well inspire readers to find out more about their own family histories. Based on a bit of Larson’s family history, this is not so much a happily-ever-after story as a next-year-will-be-better tale, with Hattie’s new-found definition of home. Hattie’s first-person narrative is a deft mix of her own accounts of managing her claim, letters to and from her friend Charlie, who is off at war, newspaper columns she writes and even a couple of recipes.
It’s 1918, so this is homesteading in the days of Model Ts rather than covered wagons, a time of world war, Spanish influenza and anti-German sentiment turning nasty in small-town America.
This young pioneer's story is lovingly stitched together from Kirby Larson’s own family history and the sights, sounds, and scents of homesteading life.What dreams would lead a 16-year-old to leave her safe home in Arlington, Iowa, and take a chance on a homestead claim in Montana? Hattie Brooks, an orphan, is tired of being shuttled between relatives, tired of being Hattie Here-and-There and the feeling of being the “one odd sock behind.” So when Uncle Chester leaves her his Montana homestead claim, she jumps at the chance for independence. Despite daily trials, Hattie continues to work her uncle’s claim until an unforeseen tragedy causes her to search her soul for the real meaning of home. For the first time in her life, Hattie feels part of a family, finding the strength to stand up against Traft Martin’s schemes to buy her out and against increasing pressure to be a “loyal” American at a time when anything-or anyone-German is suspect. Her quest to make a home is championed by new neighbors Perilee Mueller, her German husband, and their children. Under the big sky, Hattie braves hard weather, hard times, a cantankerous cow, and her own hopeless hand at the cookstove. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she summons the courage to leave Iowa and move all by herself to Vida, Montana, to prove up on her late uncle’s homestead claim.
This Newbery Honor winning, New York Times bestseller celebrates the true spirit of independence on the American frontier.įor most of her life, sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks has been shuttled from one distant relative to another.
0 kommentar(er)
