Praise
"This story has everything I love in historical fiction: adventure, resilience, and emotion that sneaks up on you. I’ll be thinking about Winnie’s journey for a long time to come."
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Emerson Ford, Author of 'What the Silent Say,' and 'Every Bend in the River"
"The novel mixes sweeping depictions of frontier life with intimate family moments, placing the reader right in the dust and uncertainty of the trail."
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Literary Titan
....While the author takes on large-scale issues, Curtis’ unadorned writing never feels heavy-handed. After a man’s accidental shooting death, Winnie reflects simply that “His body would lie here, all alone. Beneath a giant prairie sky.” There is an authenticity to the likable characters, even the most minor ones, including a fiddle player in the caravan and a grieving mother. The author has a gift of summing up people concisely; “tall and gangly” Jeb, Nora’s husband, is always “leaning this way or that, like a stalk of wheat.” Nora and Winnie are contrasted as being like “a gentle breeze” and “a runaway horse.” Whether the scenery is enormous rock monoliths, the carbonated waters of Soda Springs, or prairie grasses “tossing about like a rooted sea,” the compelling descriptions of the landscape along the Willamette Valley command attention.
Deft portrayals of people and their surroundings distinguish this historical journey.
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Kirkus Reviews
