Westering Women

October 14, 2019
The entertaining latest from Dallas (Some Place to Call Home) focuses on a motley group of women who form a bond traveling to California on the Overland Trail. In 1852 Chicago, Maggie sees a notice posted by a minister offering to lead “moral” women to the western mines of Goosetown in order to find husbands. Having been abused by her husband, Maggie sees the chance for a better life for herself and her four-year-old daughter, Clara. She’s encouraged to join by Mary, a kind and capable woman who becomes one of her closest friends and a leader on the trail. After Mary concocts a story to help her bypass the requirements, Maggie sets off on a taxing journey during which the women are plagued by disease, attacks from Native warriors, and other hardships that bring them together. As trust grows, the others reveal their own agendas for having joined, such as a search for a sibling and a hidden pregnancy. The women learn to shoot, move their wagons through arduous routes, and fight off threats. There’s not much nuance in the way the villains are portrayed, but readers will enjoy this modern take on the journey West that’s rife with girl power.

December 1, 2019

Maggie Kaiser and her daughter leave Chicago for what she hopes will be a better life out West. They join a wagon train of potential wives to gold miners led by Rev. William Parnell and his brother-in-law, Rev. Joseph Swain. As the group of women become more comfortable with one another, Maggie realizes that many of them are running away from past lives and secrets. The women learn to drive the wagons, tend the oxen, cook over campfires, and shoot guns, coalescing into a close-knit band of sisters. When the teamsters desert the wagon train, it is up to the women and two ministers to continue. Pregnancies, raging rivers, Indian attacks, rocky cliffs, blizzards, and 40-mile-long deserts are perilous obstacles that force the women to grow and learn more about themselves and one another along the way. VERDICT Though the dialog can be stilted at times, Dallas (The Bride's House) has written an engaging historical fiction about the strength of women in times of adversity. Though the women were all intended to be brides, we see each as much more than her connection to a man--a unique perspective in the 1850s. Purchase where women's and historical fiction is popular. [See Prepub Alert, 7/15/19.]--Brooke Bolton, Boonville-Warrick Cty. P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2019
In February 1859, a wagon train leaves Chicago for the 2,000-mile journey to California, carrying 44 women of high moral character in search of good husbands. Had Maggie Kaiser been honest, she would not have been invited, but she is not the only one with secrets. Penn is running from a violent man, and Mary from her own brother. Dora is pregnant, and Bessie, who brought her servant, is hiding a shocking truth. As they battle cholera, deprivation, and other dangers, the women share stories which, like links in a chain, make them stronger. When an attempted rape triggers a walkout by the male drivers, these brave women?vowing never to go back to what they were before?get the wagons across the western mountains alone. Female bonding in the nineteenth century had dangers unique to the era. Maggie's unsuitable friendships, forged over shared hardships and the impossibility of returning home, make this exciting novel difficult to put down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)