The Sweet Blue Distance by Sara Donati is a well-researched novel that takes place on a journey to and in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, beginning 1857.

Through mail, Carrie Ballentyne accepts a nursing/midwife position with Dr. Markham in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory. It’s a long journey from New York, and it’s important she arrive as soon as possible as her future employer’s wife is expecting a baby. Through correspondence, Carrie is aware that Dr. Markham is an exacting person, but Carrie is well qualified for the position. Carrie’s brother will escort her on this long journey.

It’s a long way to Santa Fe, first by train, followed by a paddlewheel ship down the Missouri to Kansas, then stagecoach, and finally by horseback to Santa Fe. Along the way she meets interesting people, including one in particular, Eli Ibarra, a native of Sante Fe and a surveyor by trade. They find mutual attraction as they learn about one another. Carrie finds Eli easy to talk to and is fascinated by stories of his native Santa Fe. Eli is obviously impressed with Carrie, her background, and her courage facing the challenges of the final two-week horseback journey.

Once Carrie arrives in Santa Fe, she learns that the doctor’s wife has already given birth. But not all is well. The baby was still-born, and the mother is suffering from puerperal insanity, known today as postpartum psychosis. From appearances, Dr. Markham is not well. Carrie worries about Lulu, their little girl, and what will become of her with both parents so severely affected. Carrie is very busy with her nursing duties at the clinic, consulting with pregnant women, as well as serving as midwife at their homes.

Carrie and Eli Ibarra continue their relationship and it becomes obvious that it could be permanent. But there are those who would object to a mixed marriage. Although Carrie is considered white, she also has Mohawk ancestry. Eli is Mestizo, a Spanish term for a person with European and Indigenous American ancestry. But their attraction for one another will not be denied.

I enjoyed The Sweet Blue Distance. It is quite long. While the average novel is around 250 to 350 pages, this book’s print length is 800 pages. However, the story line is intriguing and abundant with New Mexico Territory’s history. I also learned the meaning of many Spanish words such as gaucho (a person who understands a horse’s mind, heart and soul) and vaquero (a person who manages livestock on horseback, but who is not as expert as a gaucho). Through this engaging novel I gained a sense of attitudes of the period, and knowledge of different ethnic backgrounds, making the book interesting on many levels.

The Home and Garden Emporium: A Novel of Resilience, Friendship and Second Chances by Carolyn Niethammer captures the essence of life just before and during World War 1. The story is written in first-person and begins in 1917.

As an Irish immigrant, Ellie has fought prejudice throughout her life. Her bitter, widowed mother works at her brother’s laundry shop in New York, and after graduating from high school Ellie works there, too. Later, she finds satisfying work in a haberdashery and learns that she is adept at selling goods to satisfied customers. At the age of twenty-six she meets and soon marries a handsome bachelor, Edward Smithfield, who works at a bank. They live in Edward’s lovely New York townhouse.

Shortly after they married, Edward receives word that a favorite uncle in Tucson, Arizona is ill and his aunt needs Edward to come. By the time Ellie and Edward arrive in Tucson the uncle has died and his wife, Aunt Clara, needs assistance. In the meantime, the world is becoming aware that Europe is threatened with imminent war, that German soldiers are marching through Belgium. Edward is especially alarmed because he has close childhood friends in Belgium. He feels he must go to Europe to help them, and enlists in the Allied Forces, leaving Ellie in Tucson to deal with his newly widowed aunt and his uncle’s hardware store.

When Ellie goes to the hardware store, she finds a dirty, neglected closed-up store with a calendar dated 1914. Edward is off to war and Aunt Clara, a demanding and standoffish woman, is no help at all. Ellie feels compelled to do what she can but hardly knows where to begin. She isn’t familiar with hardware, the building is filthy, and funds are short.

Good things start happening in Ellie’s life when she meets and befriends multi-ethnic people. She also benefits from meeting some of Aunt Clara’s neighbors. From one she learns the art of gardening, the tools needed and the value of sharing this knowledge. From another, she receives encouragement and friendship with the woman and her handsome son, Anton Lincoln.

The Home and Garden Emporium is a lovely story of new beginnings and the courage it takes to make a giant leap from the familiar to the completely unknown. I enjoyed reading about pre-war and World War I attitudes and living conditions. Many of the customs, attitudes and moral values we now take for granted weren’t common to people in the early Twentieth Century. But the qualities that mattered then, such as friendships, loyalty and innovative hard work, are still worthy traits in our lives. This novel emphasis the worth of those values.

Hang the Moon, a novel by Jeannette Walls is an exciting, heart-rending story that takes place in Claiborne County, Virginia during Prohibition-era (1920 – 1933).

Sallie Kincaid, is the daughter of the well-known, wealthy Duke Kincaid. She idolizes her father, but remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. When Sallie is eight years old, Duke marries his third wife and has a son, Eddie. While Sallie has many of her father’s traits, Eddie is more like his mother, timid and intellectual. Duke encourages Sallie to help Eddie be more masculine, and while doing what she thought would help her little brother become bolder, an accident occurs that sends Sallie away to her mother’s sister, Aunt Faye.

Although Sallie loves her Aunt Faye, they live in hardship conditions, the opposite of how Sallie has been raised. She helps her Aunt Faye hand-wash sheets for a living; they scrimp to meet their bare needs. After Eddie’s mother dies, and after nine years away, Sallie is brought back home. She is almost eighteen. Her father wants her to help Eddie, now 13, become a man. The boy is frail, has no friends or pets, doesn’t play sports, but he is very bright and shows talent playing the piano. The two become close, but Sallie soon understands that she’s not going to change Eddie.

Duke Kincaid is involved in many enterprises including a store, warehouse, lumber mill, hauling company, and rental properties. The store, Emporium, is the “go to” place in town. It carries a huge variety of goods, including a large inventory of contraband whiskey. Sallie convinces her father that she should work for him, and he reluctantly agrees. When Prohibition comes to Claiborne County, people’s livelihood drastically change. As the local citizens reason, Claiborne County citizens don’t break laws, but just follow a different set of laws. It’s true moonshine whiskey can ruin people, destroy families, even get people killed, but it’s been going on for years. Now, with Prohibition, it’s obey the law and starve, or break the law and eat. It’s the only work many of these people know. Sallie finds herself in the middle of the conflict and becomes involved trying to save the family business, and that of her fellow citizens.

Hang the Moon is a well told, exciting read, and an eye opener for me regarding the challenges of Prohibition. I could have used a cast of characters—many people are involved in this exciting story. I loved the author’s memoir, The Glass Castle, and consider Hang the Moon another winner.

Among Canyon Shadows: An Eastern Artist in Western Colorado by Joyce Lohse is an interesting biography featuring two colorful characters: Flora Beatrice Farnham and John Otto.

Beatrice Farnham, born in 1876, an independent Boston artist, visited western Colorado in 1910 to paint landscapes of the southwest. Impressed with indigenous artwork, she based many pieces of artwork of that culture. She was a self-confident woman who didn’t care if others thought her eccentric. Riding astride a horse, Beatrice wore a split skirt of her own design, not worrying about what people might think. While in Colorado, Beatrice met John Otto and they struck up a friendship.

John Otto, born in 1871, was thirty-nine when he met Beatrice Farnham. On his own time and with no pay, John built trails to enable residents of the area to view the majestic scenes of what is now Mesa Verde National Park. John Otto was the first park custodian at Colorado National Monument, and its most fervent promoter. It is largely through John Otto’s efforts that the public is able to enjoy the unspoiled natural grandeur of the Colorado National Monument.

During Beatrice Farnham’s visit, John was her trail guide showing her amazing views, canyons and rock formations. Beatrice loved the rugged area, respected John’s trail-blazing work, and decided to stay. In 1911 Beatrice and John married at the base of Independence Monument (later renamed Wedding Canyon).

But not all was well. John loved the rugged life, didn’t need the comfort of a solid roof and walls, was perfectly content to live in a tent, or with no shelter at all. That wasn’t a life Beatrice wanted, or needed. Could these two strong-willed people find a compromise?

In Among Canyon Shadows Joyce Lohse captures the essence of a part of Colorado’s colorful history and its majestic scenery, as well as stories of two notable people, one from the east, and one from the west. I have read other works from this fine author and have been impressed with her thorough research and captivating presentation. The book also features a Timeline, and an extensive Bibliography which emphasizes the author’s thorough research. I enjoyed Among Canyon Shadows and highly recommend it.

“….independence is not simply the ability to go places, but the courage to keep stepping into a wider life.”
From Hedy After: The first four years with a Guide Dog

Hedy After: The first four years with a Guide Dog, a memoir by Carolyn Wing Greenlee, continues from the story begun in Steady Hedy, and moves beyond the life-changing experience of receiving her first guide dog, Hedy, a little black Labrador Retriever. I have had the pleasure of knowing the author for several years, so I freely call her Carolyn. In fact, I also know Hedy as we’ve encountered one another at Women Writing the West Conferences on several occasions.

Carolyn discusses the transformative experience of learning to live with and handle a guide dog. It wasn’t always easy. When she was accepted into the program at Guide Dogs for the Blind, Carolyn was still working through her devastating loss of vision. Acquiring a guide dog isn’t like just getting a new pet in the house. It involves almost every aspect of day-to-day living. It means working as a team, and meeting each other’s needs. Their team of two experienced many challenges as they moved through a busy life of household routine, church, family, meeting with friends, travel, public speaking and author/book-related events, often involving confrontations with strangers. Guide Dogs for the Blind gave their little team valuable training, but Carolyn and Hedy had to fine-tune those skills into what would be workable for them.

Hedy is a small dog who can be strong-willed, or hard-headed as Carolyn sometimes refers to her. Both handler and guide dog have had to learn to trust one another to gain the courage it takes to step into the unfamiliar.

The author gives much credit to puppy handlers, those generous-hearted people who raise puppies for fourteen to sixteen months, training them basic skills before they are turned over to Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Among many topics, Carolyn discusses the law that allows guide dogs into restaurants and other places that otherwise would not allow dogs. This can be challenging and not always well-received.

Carolyn writes candidly about bonding with a strong-willed black Lab, learning to trust her, defending her, listening to her, and discovering a rich life with a trusted companion.

Hedy After offers insights into the world of the visually impaired, and the opportunities having a guide dog offers. It takes trust and patience for both human and dog. In addition to her experiences with Hedy, the author graces her story with poetry that enhances her and Hedy’s relationship and emphasizes Carolyn’s strong Christian faith.

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, by Sophie Elmhirst is a gripping account of a British couple, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, who sailed the open waters of first the Atlantic Ocean, then the Pacific. What starts out as a dream of a lifetime, becomes an unimaginable nightmare.

The story briefly goes into the sailors’ backgrounds. Maurice had a sickly childhood. He grew to be a loner, socially awkward, and compulsive. Maralyn is dependable, systematic, and ambitious. They both shared a horror of wasting their lives, of living a humdrum existence. The Baileys married in December 1963 when Maurice was nearly 30, Maralyn 21.

They had a sailboat built to their specifications, a 31-foot Bermuda sloop they named Auralyn, a combination of both their names. It had a wind vane for steering, but no radio transmitter or other electronics of any kind. They sold their house, quit their jobs and, in July 1972 set sail for a journey of a lifetime.

The Baileys headed west from Hampshire, England, with a final destination of New Zealand. Marilyn, extremely organized, had made endless lists of their possessions and exactly where on the boat they were located. Maurice had taught Maralyn how to sail, but in all respects he was the captain of their vessel.

They sailed the Atlantic Ocean making landfall at many of the usual touristy places, meeting other sailors, but always returning to their solitary sailing journey. In February 1973, eight months after leaving England, they passed through the Panama Canal and began the first stage of their Pacific crossing, with their next destination the Galápagos Islands. By this time they had been sailing about six months.

Smooth sailing came to a crashing end when a sperm whale breached and severely damaged their boat. They tried briefly to stuff materials into the cracks, but it was no use, the boat could not be saved. They quickly gathered food, water, clothes, navigational tools, and their logbook. They launched the dinghy, inflated the life raft, and abandoned the Auralyn. Forty minutes from the strike of the whale, their boat sank into the unforgiving sea.

They tied the life raft to the dinghy and took turns sleeping in the more comfortable life raft. Unfortunately, their water jugs became contaminated by sea water, leaving them dependent on rain to replenish. At this point they were 300 miles east of the Galápagos Islands.

Would they have enough provisions to sustain them until they either reached land or were picked up by a passing ship? Would a ship even see them?

A Marriage at Sea held special fascination for me. My husband and I experienced a similar adventure—sold our house, bought a boat (Impunity, a Bristol 40-foot yawl), quit our jobs and, leaving Seattle, Washington, set sail for the South Pacific. Although we saw whales, they didn’t approach our boat. We did have a few rough times: storms at sea, a hurricane while in American Samoa. The Pacific Ocean is huge. In the thirty-five days it took to sail from San Diego to our first landfall in the French Marquesas, we never saw another boat or ship. I could well imagine the desperation the Baileys experienced in their 117 days adrift, exposed to the elements, utterly lacking in sufficient food and water. I’m glad I didn’t read A Marriage at Sea before we left on our sailing journey.

Side note: I wrote about our sailing experience in my memoir, Sailing with Impunity: Adventure in the South Pacific.

Riding Lessons: Things I Learned While Horsing Around by Michelle Eames is a fun and informative memoir about the author’s journey with horses.

Michelle Ames has always loved horses and acquired her first one when she was 12. From then on it has been a succession of horses. As an adult she acquired an Appoloosa she named Koda, later Kissi, a part-Arabian, then later a variety of horses including two Norwegian Fjords, one of the world’s oldest breeds.

Told with humor, the author describes her journey with horses, how she learned from them as they learned about dealing with humans. She writes of the adventures she’s experienced—both delightful and not-so-great. Michelle rides dressage, a style that emphasizes precision and harmony between the horse and rider. She’s taken lessons and writes about the different movements, hopefully executed in a controlled manner. Well, anyway, that’s the goal.

The expense of owning horses is notable. Not counting the cost of buying the animal itself, there’s a saddle and other tack, riding boots, a barn or building to shelter the horse, hay, acreage for exercise and grazing, which necessitates fencing, a truck and trailer, and regular vet and farrier (person who trims hooves) bills. Owning horses is a financial commitment. Still, for Michelle, the love of horses outweighs the costs.

The author lives in Eastern Washington so experiences some cold weather, even snow. She discusses the long winters, and later the subsequent mud. In good riding weather, she talks about long rides, even over-nighters with friends. She talks about training and the importance of going about it in slow steps, at the horse’s speed. She goes into some detail about the importance of a good-fitting saddle, both for the horse and for the human.

Horse lovers, especially those contemplating acquiring a horse, will learn a lot from the author’s experiences. As she discovers each horse’s quirks, she learns to adapt. She shares the good and bad, with humor, and always with love. She discusses teaching a horse the art of getting in and out of a trailer, about breeding, and most of all about the strong bond between a horse and its human.

Riding Lessons was a fun read. Those who have horses would enjoy it, too. It’s a book written with love, love of horses and love of the satisfaction and contentment that horses bring to their human.

When People Were Things: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation by Lisa Waller Rogers is an extraordinary book that brings history to life.

The story begins when Abraham Lincoln was twenty-two. It tells of his early years and struggles. He had a curious mind, but his formal education was limited to a month here, a month there, amounting to about a year of institutional education. Piece by piece Lincoln taught himself about law. He earned a law degree and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836. He practiced law for about twenty-five years before becoming President of the United States in 1861.

When People Were Things discusses other important people who helped shape America’s attitudes toward slavery. Of particular interest to me was the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an anti-slavery novel that had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery. The book was first published in forty-one serial newspaper segments, then later published as a wildly popular book.

When People Were Things humanizes historical figures and their struggles with moral complexities. President Lincoln had a clear vision of the country’s moral obligations, but he constantly had to defend his positions with his cabinet. His presidency was often one of criticism, strife and doubt. He was battered from all sides: too radical for Democrats and not radical enough for Republicans.

Many people were involved in the abolitionist movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals. Harriet Tubman, an African-American abolitionist and social activist born around March 1822, was best known for her role as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, where she led approximately 70 enslaved people to freedom.

In the meantime, Lincoln had his hands full with his wife, Mary. The two had nothing in common. Lincoln loved to read, contemplate. Mary loved to socialize, needed constant attention and excitement. She purchased extravagant clothes and furnishings for the White House, far exceeding their budget. They had four sons, but after their son, Willie, died Lincoln feared for his wife’s sanity.

When People Were Things is a lengthy volume at 680 pages, packed with fascinating stories and insights of the Civil War era. Author Lisa Waller Rogers highlights the moral complexities of the times, particularly about abolitionists who played significant roles in advocating for the emancipation of enslaved people. This book would be ideal reading for history students and anyone interested in this period of our nation’s history.

The Home for War Orphans by Jenna Ness, book one of three in the historical fiction “Orphans of St. Agnes” series, is a gripping novel about a group of Jewish orphans and their leader fleeing occupied France in 1940.

Sister Helen Taylor, 50, isn’t a Catholic nun as the name might imply, but is the head mistress and founder of St. Agnes Orphanage in Paris, France. The old, crumbling building is the only home some of the children can remember. Helen has faced many dangers—she was a battlefield nurse for the Red Cross, has lost a husband and child, and has many regrets. Her only focus now is to save the children in her charge from Nazis who are fast approaching the gates of Paris. Helen has been able to place some of the children in homes, but now she must get her remaining six charges to safety. It’s risky: their old German-made truck is likely to break down, funds are short, and their future uncertain.

Margot Vashon, almost 18, is the oldest child at St. Agnes’ Orphanage, but she has the comfort of having her little sister Lucie with her. Sister Helen has counted on Margot’s help for years and now Margot must take on the crucial role of helping keep these children safe while making their escape.

The group’s goal is to travel to Marseille, on the French southern boarder, board a ship to Portugal, then eventually sail to the United States. As they make their escape, we learn Helen Taylor’s story of successes and bitter failures, and of Margot’s struggle to help the younger children cope with the hardships of travel. A young French AWOL soldier joins the group, but is this going to be a hindrance or help? When Margot’s little sister gets separated from the group, they are torn between taking the time to find her and endangering the whole group from the advancing Nazis, or going on without her.

The Home for War Orphans is an inspiring novel of courage and perseverance. Much of the book concentrates on internal conflict and relationships while in the midst of traveling under the dangerous conditions of congested roads, limited supplies, and frantic efforts to escape Nazi invasion. It’s a well-written novel with surprising turns.