by Michelle Hoover. Hoover's engrossing debut novel opens in 1913 on the Upper Midwest plains, an unforgiving landscape for farmers Enidina and Frank Current and their neighbors Mary and Jack Morrow. Through the decades, Mary and Enidina's unique voices, presented alternately, pull us in to their harsh, dismal lives. Enidina, a coarse earth mother with fire-colored hair, tells her story as an old woman in heartfelt letters to an absent grandson so that he will understand her life as it once was and know the kind of people he came from, people who battled prairie fires, failed crops, treacherous neighbors, and the Great Depression. Her friendship with Mary begins badly because she doesn't like Mary's superior airs. In her passages, Mary tells of her own hopes and dreams, her longing for a clean, orderly place and not this farmstead full of mud and the smell of butchered animals. Mary tries to protect her three sons from her brutal husband, and while Jack has a place in the rhythm of the land, Mary finds solace only in the nearby chapel. VERDICT Borrowing from her own family history, Hoover burns away the glamour of the pioneer life, blending history and brilliant storytelling. This standout novel is highly recommended. --Library journal
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