Perhaps I went into Summer of Promise expecting a LOT or perhaps it was just the fact that this book is the first of a trilogy that will share the "Westward Winds" theme, but the volume came up a bit short. I tend to think it was the latter because there was a lot going on in this book.
The main character of Abigail Harding hops out to Wyoming (From Vermont) to spend time with her sister Charlotte because she thought perhaps her sister was a bit lonely out on Army fort in the middle of the "boring" Wyoming countryside. You may think that this and the likely love interest that we find in Ethan Bowles, a lieutenant at the fort, would consume the bulk of the book. However, this is not the case.
Within this book we also focus on the following:
- Robberies at the fort
- Peg's place (the hog ranch or a house of ill-respute)
- Leah who works at Peg's Place
- Abigail teaching English to the German soldiers at the fort
- Abigail and her sister Charlotte bringing up a puppy named Puddles
- Charlotte being sickly while expecting and the underlying reasons
- Charlotte's cranky husband Jeffrey
- Ethan's complicated relationship with his grandfather
That alone is a lot but there were also other smaller things such as baseball games, friends like Oliver, sewing circles, adventures with the cook, etc. that also took up space in the volume. The constant changing of thoughts and activities made the book a bit hard to follow consistently or develop a firm desire to keep turning the page. This was a rare volume that I went through chapter by chapter.
I ended up reading the second two volumes of the Texas Dreams trilogy without reading the first though I do own it now to read later. I am thinking that this book is the way Amanda Cabot sets up the scenery for her books and that the next two will be more focused as the other Cabot books I have read were most concise and gripping. I don't think I put Tomorrow's Garden down once.
I would emphasize that despite my note on the activity in the book that ended up being a satisfying read and leaves me waiting to read more about the next chapter in Charlotte's life as she is to be the star in that book. It should be quite interesting, and I will also be interested in seeing how the book compares to this one and the previous trilogy mentioned.
Also interesting--- Amanda Cabot mentioned at the end of this book that she will have a Christmas novella released later this year. I will be watching for it as well.
On a further note, I do want to call attention to the hearty way Amanda Cabot works the Christian message into this book. Instead of skirting around faith with generic calls to pray or Bible verse relating, this book features testimony and a female lead who offers true Christian compassion and aid to all while also offering a heartfelt reflection on trusting in God and Christ to help a man who has a void. I would recommend this volume for these aspects alone.
Summer of Promise is available as of January 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
Disclosure: I received a review copy of this volume.
0 comments:
Post a Comment