Alright. I need to say something.
I was wrong.
Yes. It happens.
I was wrong.
Completely wrong about this book.
Let me explain.
The youth group girls had a slumber party at the Pastor's house while he was gone on a trip. His wife made us popcorn and we watched movies way too late, and it was great. She works at the library, so we spent part of the day there, and she loaned me a book. An old book. Now don't get me wrong, I like old books, but I had doubts about this one. It was published in 1976. It was recommended by my pastor's wife. She's amazing and all, but I really didn't figure our reading tastes would match up at all. But I took it to be nice.
And I started reading it.
And I was wrong.
It's on Goodreads, but it doesn't have a blurb there, so this is what the book cover says.
"Tisha?"
"Yes?"
"You one good white woman."
With these words an Indian boy named Chuck hands over his heart and his trust to a young teacher. it is 1927 in Alaska, and Tisha is Anne Hobbs' true story.
Full of energy and ideals, Anne treks across the northern tundra to become schoolmarm in the remote gold-rush settlement of Chicken. Here her life's adventure begins- an adventure that pits her against the relentless Alaskan winter and the equally relentless, sometimes savage, determination of the whole colorful lot of Chickenites that Anne will conform, for her own good, to their standards.
Three men court Anne's favors: Joe Temple, handsome and cynical; Cabaret Jackson, a brawling frontiersman; and Fred Purdy, warm, generous...and half-Eskimo.
Her neighbors open-hearted welcome cools as Anne's friendship with Fred Purdy grows stronger. It evaporates when she seats little Chuck in class with her white students. And when Anne gets her back up, hostility erupts.
Amid the turmoil, Anne finds the strong center of herself. And all along her way- even as she fights for the man she loves and the children who have become hers- Anne makes the most of the very real joys of life in the North Country.
First off, it gets five hearts from me.
♥♥♥♥♥
I loved everything about this book. It's a true story, which is always amazing. It had some parts in it that were simply hilarious, and a few that were downright heartbreaking.
The story was told to Rober Specht by Anne herself, so the whole things makes me feel like I'm right there in some little Alaska town, taking on wolves and crazy miners, and dancing every Friday night and trying to get kids to take baths.
I just finished the book last night after reading it for four and a half hours straight. I told my mom that I would not be at all disappointed if she decided to get it for me as a Christmas present.
I would definitely read it again.
Unlike lots of old, historic books, this one didn't flood me with boring details of exactly how everything was done. It read like a story, not a book of facts.
The characters were so colorful and I'm jealous that it happened so long ago and I can't hunt some of them down and talk to them myself, because I just loved the story and it only covered one year of Anne's life. I have a hundred questions I'd like to ask about things that happened later.
During the last chapter I was ready to burst into tears, because I thought it was going to end sad. You know, real life often ends sad, so since it was a true story I knew the author couldn't brighten things up just for the reader's sake. But then the epilogue came and it was happy tears instead of sad ones. It was perfectly thrilled with the ending.
If you like historic stories at all, this is definitely one to get your hands on. I'm going to be a good girl and wait until after Christmas, but if it doesn't show up I'm going to buy it myself. I told my dad he has to read it as soon as I get it, because he loves true stories about old times.
Have a great day!
