According to Olivia Hawker, One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow came to her very easily. Once she gathered up various elements of her own family history, the plot and the characters fell right into place, and even the actual writing was not that much of a chore. She still says that this 2019 novel is the "easiest" one she has ever written.
I don't know about all of that, but I can tell you that I was almost immediately taken by the setting (two 1876 Wyoming homesteads) and the tragedy/crime that bound two families so close together whether they wanted to be bound that tightly or not. After the two families find themselves both lacking an adult male as winter approaches, they have little choice but to move in together and share what they have. Any other decision will likely result in the deaths of several children and most of the livestock owned by the families.
Really, the Bemises and the Webbers were bound together long before the two women put aside their rage and pride long enough to consider what was best for the children. Ernest Bemis made certain of that when he shot and killed Substance Webber after catching the man and Cora Bemis in a more-than-compromising position. Ernest almost immediately rode the 20 miles into town to turn himself in to the sheriff, and after his trial was sentenced to two years in jail. Suddenly the women are dependent on the seventeen-year-old Clyde Webber and the sixteen-year-old Beulah Bemis to do all of the farm labor their husbands had previously done if either family were to survive the approaching winter.
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow is a well written piece of historical fiction, one that gives a clear picture of how precarious life was in that part of the American West in 1876. It features two strong women trying to do what's best for their own families despite what has so recently torn both families apart. It is part western, part love story, and part character study. I give this one four out of five stars.
(I'm reading at a slower pace these days, and I'm finding that slowing myself down has made me look at novels in a slightly different way. I'm catching more details and nuances now, I think, than I have for a while - and I'm enjoying that.)
This sounds like a book I would enjoy reading. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Sam.
ReplyDeleteI hope you do, Cathy, if you give it a try. I got it via one of those Prime loaner books that you can gather up from Prime. I think you can have 10 of those at a time, so I probably need to return this one and see what else is on offer.
ReplyDeleteI'm always drawn to stories about homesteaders in the American West. So I definitely want to give this one a read. :D
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to know how accurate any of these novels really are, but this one sure made me feel the isolation and constant threat of living so far away from every other living soul. I don't know where settlers like these found that kind of courage.
DeleteThis sounds excellent so I'll be looking into it. I need more books for my American states challenge that are serious about depicting the place and the times. What you say at the end strikes a chord with me. I've read so many books this year that I'll even hit one hundred soon and that's 'really' unusal for me. But I'm wondering, as I've wondered many times before, whether so many books is necessarily a good thing. I'm sure I miss things by devouring books so quickly. I want to seriously address this next year.
ReplyDeleteI guess the old cliché that "less is more" really can be true more times than we realize, Cath. I've noticed that I'm actually enjoying my reading time more now that I've cut back by about 50%. I think I got caught up in the numbers and maybe got a little frantic about missing something good. We all know it's impossible to read everything we want to read, something I need to keep reminding myself of.
DeleteAnyway, it's working right now. I don't feel like a dog chasing its own tail anymore. :-)
Next year I want to seriously address this. I have a bunch of long classics I want to read but have been putting off because of their length and that thing that it might be 600 to 1000 pages but it's still only one book as regards numbers. So silly, but I see you mention getting caught up in numbers too. Next year I will be reading those and combining the idea with my wish to read more Victorian lit. By the way, I saw you mention that you got One for the Blackbird via Prime reading so I went and grabbed it too. Thanks for the tip-off!
DeleteI felt that way while reading "Blackbird," which is just short of 500 pages while reading another 500 page book at the same time. I realized one morning that I was about 850 pages, combined, into the two books without having finished anything in almost two weeks. Felt strange. Glad you were able to grab "Blackbird" on Prime still. Can't be that.
DeleteThis is definitely a book for my 'wish list' - great review!
ReplyDeleteI have found myself reading many more books outside of my usual genres, and I have to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to embrace new to me authors.
I have never seemed to be able to read with the same speed as many of my fellow bloggers, maybe it's an OCD thing as I need to engage with every single word and get a storyline and characters into context, before I can enjoy a book completely. So, I can totally relate to the final comment you made in your piece.
I'm really into numbers, historical graphs of past data, etc., and that sometimes causes me to read faster and faster without realizing...always trying to set new personal best numbers. I let it sneak up on me again, and only now realize how destructive and distracting that attitude can turn out to be. Slowing down has been a pleasant surprise for me.
ReplyDeleteGenre-stretching is a good thing, IMO. I don't do as much of that as I did when I was younger, and that has to change. I'm reading one right now that I would have never picked up before making a conscious decision to see what else I've been missing by concentrating my reading so strongly on crime fiction (which I still dearly love).