Nineteen-year-old Aldine McKenna is stuck at home with her sister and aunt in a Scottish village in 1929 when two Mormon missionaries ring the doorbell. Aldine’s sister converts and moves to America to marry, and Aldine follows, hoping to find the life she’s meant to lead and the person she’s meant to love.
In New York, Aldine answers an ad soliciting a teacher for a one-room schoolhouse in a place she can’t possibly imagine: drought-stricken Kansas. She arrives as farms on the Great Plains have begun to fail and schools are going bankrupt, unable to pay or house new teachers. With no money and too much pride to turn back, she lives uneasily with the family of Ansel Price—the charming, optimistic man who placed the ad—and his family responds to her with kind curiosity, suspicion, and, most dangerously, love. Just as she’s settling into her strange new life, a storm forces unspoken thoughts to the surface that will forever alter the course of their lives.
Laura McNeal’s novel is a sweeping and timeless love story about leaving—and finding—home.
so captivatingly well written! Poignant, beautiful account of strong women who hold families together through the dust bowl, abandonment, lost and found love ,tragedies and overwhelming successes.
From Kansas to California during The Great Depression This was the only Kindle first book that held any interest to me, and I wound up liking it more than I thought I would. Set during The Great Depression, it *is* a depressing book. Not a lot of good happens, though there are glimpses of happiness, but I still found myself wanting to know what happens next.
Reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie, written for adults. I have to admit this was the first amazon first pick that I’ve gotten that I’ve really enjoyed. It’s a steady, well written story that keeps you moving forward. It’s not suspenseful, but it seemed very well researched, and the characters were fleshed out so fully you had to follow their story, their heartbreak was yours. You were able to really relate to the characters.