I have a lovely patron who is a voracious reader. She has read and re-read so many excellent books. At sixteen, a student in a classical school, and being raised in a faithful Catholic home, she is looking for books that are new to her, exciting, well-written, and morally on point. She reads quickly and well, and therefore is stretching me in how I can best keep her fed on goodness. 

What a gift it is to have Sherry Early as a friend! Sherry has been my librarian “phone-a-friend” more and more of late. As I worked with my patron, I asked Sherry for a list of books suitable for a teen girl with strong morals. She has a particular interest in historical fiction and specifically Westward Expansion. She likes The Virginian, The Girl of the Limberlost, and Bargain Bride. She loves a great number of the classics. And, of late, she has been reading and re-reading Jennifer A. Nielsen because of her carefully researched and exciting wartime fiction. Sherry and I both appreciate Nielsen as well and so Sherry knew what we were after. 

Because I know that you will ask, here is a link to the list that Sherry compiled for me. Please remember that she made this list based on her standards for her library and in consideration of my needs. Please note that wherever either of us has reviewed the book, we have linked to that review and encourage you to read those reviews to determine the appropriateness of the recommendation for your needs. 

“When I heard that my great-grandmother Hattie Inez Brooks Wright had homesteaded in Eastern Montana by herself as a young woman, I found it hard to believe. Tiny and unprepossessing, she was the last person I’d associate with the pioneer spirit. But, I was intrigued and played detective for several weeks without much luck trying to find out more. One day I stumbled onto the Montana Bureau of Land Management Records. The thrill I felt when I discovered a claim number with her name attached! A query to the National archives soon put into my hands a copy of her homestead application paperwork. I was hooked!” -Kirby Larson, Author’s Note from Hattie Big Sky

While this story is not exactly about Larson’s grandmother Hattie, it is inspired by her. The real Hattie Big Sky did not leave journals or letters for Kirby to use to tell the story, but after much research, she was able to sketch a story that might have been like her grandmother’s. It is an exciting story – one that I had a tough time putting down. My patron who requested these book recommendations told me last weekend that while she was reading while camping with her family, she had “hit the point where you don’t want anyone to talk to you because you are at THAT point in the story.” I felt that way for much of Hattie Big Sky. While the family sat near the fire playing games, I was content to be in the camper washing dishes and tidying up – anything to keep listening to my audiobook. 

“The reasons for heading west were as varied as the homesteaders themselves, but common themes stitched their way through these stories. Endless work, heartache, loss, and incredibly, fond memories of those hardscrabble homestead days. Before I even realized what was happening, I had a story about homesteading started.” – Author’s Note

Hattie Inez Brooks has lived most of her life on the charity of relations. Her father, a coal miner, died as coal miners often did – of ruined lungs. Her mother died shortly after of grief and hardship. Since that time, Hattie has been passed around from one family to another. In 1918, sixteen-year-old Hattie receives a letter from her mother’s brother inviting her to take up his Montana land claim. By his own account, he has lived the life of a scoundrel, and that is why he didn’t ask for her sooner. But, the doctors have told him that he will not live long enough to see his claim proven. He wants Hattie to inherit the claim and all that he has in the hopes that she can finish the work that he has started and earn herself a future free of family charity. Hattie barely blinks before she writes to accept. 

When Hattie gets to Montana in February of 1918, her uncle has already died, but his good neighbors, who loved him dearly, claim Hattie as one of their own. Hattie discovers that only ten months remain out of the three years allotted to prove the claim. This story follows the exciting, tragic, and realistic events of those ten months with a combination of first-person narrator, letters that Hattie writes to friends and family, and a series of newspaper submissions that Hattie writes for the paper back home in Iowa. During those ten months, Hattie struggles against the harsh Montana climate, anti-German sentiment, WWI rationing and war efforts, and the tragic Spanish Flu. The story is marvelously well told. Always interesting. Well-researched. Such a wonderful way to enter into this slice of American history. 

Lovers of the later Little House on the Prairie books, Bargain Bride, Letters of a Woman Homesteader, Keeper of the Bees, and the later Little Britches books are likely to enjoy this delightful story. There is some romance in this story, but it is totally chaste – there is not even one kiss. There is much heartache and suffering, and it does not end with everything tied up in a bow. But, it is satisfying.