Reviewer Comments: Maggie Newcomb is like any other typical 18 year old. She feels as though she doesn’t know where her life is heading or what her path may be. The difference is that Maggie lives in Oregon in 1882. She feels as though everyone around her has a plan or at least something that they are good at. Her sister is newly engaged and her older brother is planning his wedding as well. Maggie knows that she needs to make a change to move her life forward, but isn’t sure what she needs to do.
Then she realizes that Colby Stoddard, her longtime crush, is available. Maggie decides to learn how to sew better in the hopes that she can impress Mrs. Stoddard with her quilting skills and thereby win the heart of her son. The only fly in the ointment is that his mother has brought in a young woman, Tamara Brennan, to live with them in the hopes that Tamara and Colby will make a match. Fortunately for Maggie, Evan Parker has also returned home and seems to have a crush on Tamara.
Maggie comes up with a plan to spend time with Evan so that she can help him win Tamara and then win Colby for herself. Of course, plans never seem to work out the way you want them to and Maggie soon realizes that she may not want what she has always thought she wanted.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Ms. Pella’s writing style is beautiful. The words just flowed off the page and pulled me right into the drama of Maggie’s life. I sympathized with her lack of direction and rooted for her advocacy of a friend in jail. I thought that the setting and the time period were accurately and realistically portrayed. This is a delightful story about the things we do for love and about how love sometimes finds us in unexpected ways. I also appreciated the many types of love that Ms. Pella addresses in her book. She talks about the love between family members, between sisters, between mothers and daughters and between friends. I think that the theme of love found will resonate with most readers as they remember what they have done themselves to win the person of their dreams. They will laugh and cringe at Maggie’s schems.
I loved the addition of the trial and the impact that it had on Evan and Maggie’s relationship. Ms. Pella made the development of their relationship seem natural through the amount of time they spent together. The trial also added an element of suspense to the story as we waited to see how it would turn out. The ways in which people viewed parental rights and the physical punishment of children was done in a historically accurate way. Most people would not have interfered in a parent’s beating of a child during the 1800’s. In thinking about how the people of that time period reacted, one begins to question how far we have come in handling this issue and if any of these prejudices still remain.
I gladly recommend this book. I stayed up to finish it and loved every moment.
