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5 star:		(9)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the first book that I have read by Dorothy Garlock and I very much enjoyed it. I had picked it not realising that it was sent in Frontier America - a time and place that don't hold any particular interest for me. However, from the first page I was hooked on the story.

Ana, a widow, receives a letter from her stepdaughter (just 11 years younger than her, at 16) who ran away to marry the man who had got her pregnant. She summons Ana to attend the birth and thus Ana is thrust into a strange family with all their secrets and problems.

Harriet dies in childbirth and Ana promises her at the end that she will bring up the baby, Harry. This binds her to Harriet's husband's family as the baby's father and Harriet's husband, Owen Jamison, won't allow her to leave. His sister, Esther, has treated Harriet abysmally and treats Ana similarly. The story unfolds as we learn about the history of Esther, Owen and their absent brother Paul and the way in which it has bound them together but also caused them huge pain. The writing is excellent, with great period detail about living and working in America of the nineteenth century.

There is a gentle love story which is a joy to read, and as the events unfold and we learn that things aren't necessarily as they seem, the resolution is very satisfying.

I enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to others.

This book is one of my all time favorites.I have reread it many times. The characters engaged me immediately. Because my family farmed in Missouri, the setting of 1880's Iowa captured my imagination. I like that Mrs. Garlock uses characters who have real life afflictions and the main characters have to cope with them; in this book it is mental illness, mental retardation, and teenage rebellion. I also like how the hero has his own personal issues to overcome and is not just the savior for the heroine. The warmth of family life is here too. If you like Dorothy Garlock's books, this will become one of your favorites too.

Dorothy Garlock has written another wonderful book. This one looks at the family dynamics on a small farm in Missouri and the joy one woman brings into an abused family.

This is definitly heavier material than in most Garlock books but well worth it.

This is the first Garlock book I read and it made me feel like I was actually there. It was one of the most beautiful love stories I had read and Dorothy made me see the west as it was at that time. I could almost taste the foods that were prepared and could see how difficult it was for women of the early west to survive. I own every book that was written by Dorothy Garlock.....she is the best!

I am a huge Dorothy Garlock fan! I have read all of her books and most of them more than one time. Her books are like old friend, and when I reread a book, it is like visisting old friends and places. I love the style and the stories. She almost always have more than one love story going on. They are fast moving books and grap you from the fist. I love her books!!!!

I am a relatively new Dorothy Garlock fan, and I have enjoyed each and everyone of her books. This story was very sad, but sad as it was, it held my attention from the first page. This was a very moving story, and one of the best historical's that I have ever read.

I can't say this is a pleasant book to read, but I admire the work in it. It deals with people who are part of a very dysfunctional family and others who are thrown in with them.
After misunderstandings Anna travels to take care of her ailing stepdaughter and receives a stunning, cold "welcome". She also acquires an infant to take care of.
I take issue with the speed with which the main male character makes changes in his own thinking. Those changes are good to see, but seem to be unrealistically fast and easy.
Nevertheless, I was ordering several more Garlock books yesterday. This one is definitely worth reading, but tried my patience. I have liked others of her books better. To each his own, I guess.

I received this book in a mystery box off Ebay, and wow. I have never read another of Ms. Garlock's stories, but I have to say that I was impressed with the style of her writing. She seems to be genuinely talented as a writer. However, the stereotypes and high-handed judgements in this tale were appalling. Simply put, this is more of a morality tale than a romance. The defiant stepdaughter dies for her sins. The mentally ill woman is treated with brutality. The cognitively deficient woman is treated like a child. The beautiful woman is a virgin. There is no sex at all until page 251, and frankly I felt bad that the poor virgin had to wait that long.

This is one of my all time favorites. I just love the story and the charecters are so well written I can almost believe they are real. Thank you Amazon, now I can have it with me always.

this is about a defiant stepchild who at 16 gets pregnant and goes to find the father of her child in Iowa. Ana sends Harriet a letter and begs her to come to Iowa for the birth of the child. The conditions at the Iowa home are horrific and Ana dies during the child's birth, the child lives. Ana (who is young) falls in love with Harriet's husband. It is 1885 and there is not much work to be found.