Hattie Big Sky (review)

There's not much future in Iowa for sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks, whose guardian aunt is urging her to quit school and take a domestic job, so the opportunity to prove up a Montana homestead claim left to her by a deceased uncle seems a longshot worth taking. She'll have the better part of one year to complete the fencing, bring forty acres under cultivation, and raise the nearly forty-dollar fee to own the property free and clear. Neighbors welcome her and assist wherever they can—advising on crop choice, stretching fence wire in spare moments, donating a few chickens, sharing heaving equipment, and offering moral support and friendship. But Hattie's particular closeness with the family of German immigrant Karl Mueller and his American wife, Perilee, catches the attention of Traft Martin, scion of a wealthy ranching family and head of a nativist contingent of townsfolk who whip up anti-German sentiments as World War I rages in Europe and claims the lives of American soldiers. Martin keeps Hattie wary and off balance—charming her with hints of romance one moment, cajoling her to sell her farm the next; reasoning with her about making ill-advised friendships, and then turning to thinly veiled threats. Hattie's determination and loyalty to the Muellers is unshakable, but just when it looks like she will succeed, Nature throws a knockout punch worse than anything Martin or his ilk could devise. Larson's tale is inspired by an ancestor who, as a single young woman, did prove up a Montana claim, but she turns to more common experiences of failure to fashion Hattie's fictional story. With the literary Great Plains overpopulated by plucky 1800s girls on covered wagons, it's refreshing to bring the homestead experience into the twentieth century and meet a strong-willed young woman who meets failure with dignity, shoulders her debts with good-natured resolve, and plans her future with cautious optimism.