The Frontiersman's Daughter

July 28, 2013

Title: The Frontiersman's Daughter
Author: Laura Frantz
Publisher: Revell
Pages: 413
ISBN: 978-0-8007-3339-1

Synopsis:
One woman searches for love--and herself--in a wild land.

Lovely and high-spirited, Lael Click is the daughter of a celebrated frontiersman. Haunted by her father's ties to the Shawnee Indians and her family's past, Lael comes of age in the fragile Kentucky settlement her father founded. As she faces the many trials of life on the frontier, Lael draws strength from the rugged land. But the arrival of a handsome doctor threatens her view of her world, her God, and herself. Can the power of grace and redemption break through in this tumultuous place?


This epic novel gives you a glimpse into the simple yet daring lives of the pioneers who first crossed the Appalachians, all through the courageous eyes of a determined young woman who would not be defeated.

Review:
This is a difficult book to review. I'm of two minds with this one.

I will start with the positives:
Laura Frantz has a beautiful writing style. I just fell in love with Love's Reckoning and couldn't wait to read more. The way she describes the surroundings, the fort, the homesteads, the people, the dress, she can transport you back to the time. You can imagine everything she is writing with such clarity. I love when a story does that and The Frontiersman's Daughter does that easily.

However, moving on to the not so positives:
The Frontiersman's Daughter didn't seem as polished as Love's reckoning. We were introduced to many characters in this book, but many of them just disappeared, leaving the reader to question what happened to them, and a few of them were killed off and everything just moved on. It left me scratching my head a little bit. Another part in the book, I kind of question it being in there at all. It seemed to be just a bridge the character needed to move forward in time, but played no real purpose to the story.

Lael I did also have a bit of a problem with. She's kind of all over the place with her thinking. I can understand her thinking at the beginning of the book. We are introduced to her when she is 13 going on 14. Her ideas of love, I can understand are just a bag of emotions at that age, but she doesn't seem to change much in her ideas of it as she gets older. She just switches her attention to a different guy.

I did enjoy Ian Justice, he was a very mature and responsible character that balanced out Lael. Lael's brother was another good balance for her, but sadly, he wasn't in the book a whole lot, but the parts he was in brought a calm to Lael's flighty thinking for a time.

The book had many good parts and a few head scratchers.
It's a Maybe.
3 out of 5


Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by. Leave a word, leave a line, I would love to hear what you have to say.

Latest Instagrams

© The Shelf Life. Design by FCD.