“We cannot control the situations that life presents us. We can only control how we respond to them.”—The Fossil Hunter

The Fossil Hunter, a novel by Irene Sandell, is a captivating story that takes place from years surrounding1905 and toggling to 2015, Texas.

In 2015, Meredith Bannon, 73, a flower child of the ‘60s, travels to Troubadour, Texas. It has been fifty years since she’s been there, years of highs and lows, mostly due to bad choices. Her grandmother Grace has passed away and has left the house on 200 acres to her. Meredith was raised in this house by her grandmother, which has left many unanswered questions about her own parents.

Meredith has mixed feelings when she sees the Victorian-style house with its tall white columns. It was already old when she lived there. But now she sees the home as an adult. Inside, it’s like a time-capsule, and memories come flooding back.

In 1905, Grace Freeman is ready for a change. She has taught in a one-room schoolhouse for eight years, and it’s time to move on. At the age of 24 she applies for secretarial school for young women in Fort Worth. She thrives on her new skills and sees the world opening up for her. After graduating, she accepts a position in Troubadour, Texas, working for an insurance company. She meets and falls in love with
a widower, Martin Durham, a barber and the town marshal. They move to the house where he’d lived with his wife, a large Victorian home. Martin is a kind, well respected man, but is adamant that a wife’s place is in the home, that a wife working outside the home is demeaning to her husband.

While both Meredith’s and her grandmother’s stories are unveiled, interesting discoveries of fossils are introduced: a fossil bed that is the largest in the world for Paleozoic fossils, estimated to be 298 million years old. In both women’s stories paleontologists work the fields where the fossils have been discovered.

I found The Fossil Hunter a story with meaningful messages. Times have changed but human needs remain basically the same. We need to be able to express ourselves, to learn, and to grow. There have been times when people can manage no more than survival. And it’s true that many people are content with just being, letting life play itself out. But to learn new things, to expand our knowledge and live up to our potential, that’s living life to the fullest. In The Fossil Hunter, we see both kinds of living. One, a life of poor choices, and the other of striving to learn, but chafing with restrictions. And along the way, we learn of fossils and the work of paleontologists. In The Fossil Hunter we experience the ancient, the old, and the new.