I am a huge fan of this author’s Cliffside Bay series, so I was very excited to see that she was branching out into a new series with a historical setting. I am happy to say that all of the trademarks of her writing are still present.
The premise (young, pretty, schoolmistress shows up in a wild west town) is one that is familiar and dear to me. I grew up in Northern California, whose modern history is built on the Gold Rush of 1848-49. I quite literally grew up on stories about people who came from the East to make money to send back home, intending to return but winding up staying.
Field trips were to Sutter’s Mill and ghost towns, and vacations were spent in the Sierra Nevadas, where some mining towns have modernized, but retained their history. The author’s descriptions of Emerson Pass, therefore, felt familiar and allowed me to be comfortable in the setting. She did a great job of bringing the town (warts and all) to life.
I also liked how she had a cross-section of characters filling the town. None of them were caricatures, and they seemed like they could have been built on real people (pretty sure this author does a LOT of research to get things just right). Everything about the characters and situations rang true.
I have to give a special shout out to the Barnes children. I liked how each one had their own personality and weren’t just lumpy children. There is sometimes the tendency of authors to focus on adult characters at the expense of children, but that’s not the case here. This is good, especially considering that Quinn is a schoolmistress – the individuality of all of the children is essential.
I very much enjoyed this book, and I look forward to more visits to Emerson Pass.
