Book 5 of 5
Starts in Arkansas heads to Gooding, Texas. Other than the name of the town, book 5 has nothing to do with the town or the people in it.
Loved the story, two people argue to wed and then must make the marriage work. ( )

strange ( )

strange ( )

Very tedious read! While Forevermore (Cathy Marie Hake) is the best book I've ever read, this has to be one of the worst! It's one of those books that's you just wanted to finish reading just so the pain goes away. I wouldn't say this is a spoiler but 90% of the book reflects on a mean mother who just had a stroke who is living with her son and his new bride. The mother is mean to the new wife until the very end of the book. Sorry Cathy, it totally lacked the humor of Forevermore. It reminded of a book you had to read in Lit. Class that you knew you'd. If you want to read it download the sample book from Amazon. What happens in the first two chapters is exactly what happens for the next 300 pages. ( )

Abandoned in chapter 15 of 22. I just couldn't take it anymore. I kept reading, hoping the characters would improve, but I didn't stop hating them.

Maggie (Irish trader/healer from Arkansas who grew up as virtually the only female in the community and was treasured and taught independence and generosity by all the men) is too kind and when she happens to think poorly of someone who treats her with incredible hatred and disrespect, she immediately invokes the helps of Jesus. Not a bad characteristic, but seriously frustrating. She has an eccentric need to collect things and brings most of what she owns with her to Texas from Arkansas when she marries, without informing her husband -- how that's possible when they travelled together, I'm still trying to figure out.

Todd, her German farmer husband, has a very narrow view of "a woman's place" and constantly yo-yos back and forth between wanting to bed her and thinking she is overstepping her bounds into his manly territory. He, of course, doesn't bother to tell her what his cultural expectations for a woman are. How she's supposed to know what he wants is a mystery. He sweet talks her in one paragraph and then ridicules her in the next.

Adding to all of these difficulties is Helga, Todd's bed-ridden, stroke-victim beast of an ungrateful, cold-hearted, condescending mother. She hates Maggie because she doesn't come from money and she's Irish and so should be a maid or nurse, not a daughter-in-law. Maggie cares for this woman, cleans up after her, rehabilitates her, feeds her--all before marrying the evil woman's son--and then ends up sharing a one-room cabin with the wicked witch afterwards. Helga is hateful and cruel and undermines Maggie every chance she gets despite the fact that Maggie is kind to her without fail. And these two horrible characters are consistently quoting from the Bible to justify their behavior.

I understand that this is historical fiction, but I still doubt that a character as free-spirited as Maggie would "love" a man as cold and backward as Todd in as short a time as they were together before their marriage and that Todd would knowingly marry a woman as independent as Maggie and then expect her to just fall in line when they arrived at his farm.

I hated this so much that I will not be reading any more from this author. ( )