What are you reading the week of Sunday, April 5, 2015?

[hippywife]

29. This was a pretty good read.

It's written in what was mostly a lot of poor grammar, the main characters being largely uneducated outside of their churches, so that took a little getting used to in the beginning, but wasn't a lot of work to read, or terribly difficult to overcome so that it took away from enjoying the story.

It did turn out to be pretty heavy on doctrine, and the differences/fissures between the various sects of American religion at the time. I suppose she was trying to make it as intrinsic to the story as possible, and it was to some extent, but I didn't think it needed to be as heavy on that aspect (I skipped over a few of the excerpts of the sermons given by the main character's Calvinist preacher husband.). It was basically almost all they talked about, lived and breathed, colored most of the story, as they were pretty insular for the most part. There was a major good vs. evil thread that ran throughout, doctrinally, as well as the major plot line, and interwoven through both, but not as tightly as it might have been.

I still liked the main character, though she and the other female characters didn't think much of themselves or their contribution to the lives of their families and the hardships they endured without every dropping the domestic ball. They worked really hard from sun-up to sundown, but were just wives and mothers, nothing more even in their own eyes. Her husband was pretty likeable, as well. Not a fire and brimstone style preacher, but a seemingly reasonable man who was kind and loving to his wife, his kids and the people around him, even the very divisive and annoying among them.

It was a pretty quick easy read, and the story line itself held my interest throughout, with the settlers moving ever west from Kentucky through Missouri, and all the conflicts that caused. Was pretty light on the details of the major happenings of the times. Much of it was mentioned mostly in passing with the characters discussing it and wondering how it would impact their lives, without actually going very deeply into how it would or did. Was heavy on the interactions, both positive and negative, with the Native Americans ("Injuns" to one and all), and surviving the seismic upheavals along the New Madrid fault.

Anyone who likes very light historical fiction, heavy on the family, community and religious lives of the settlers, but light on historic details, would probably enjoy it.