I’m going to add book reviews to this blog. Why? Because I’m a read-a-holic. Books are my beer.

This was a book I read because I was forced to by my evening book group. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy book group very much, but this one was huge, I couldn’t get it at the library in time so I bought it, and I didn’t finish reading it in time.

Jennifer put a lot of accurate history into this book. As always, for me, there’s a bit too much repetitive info, but I have a feeling that’s a publisher’s priority – so one never forgets where they are in the story-line, no matter if they stopped at their current page hours, days, or months ago. Personally, it annoys me – yet I see it in practically every book I read.

Otherwise, I was delighted to see this is the author who writes the Elm Creek Quilt books, so of course, the main character worked on a quilt. Not as soon as I would have thought, but I was glad it was there.

If you read the book and know the age of the main character, you will now know that I am around the same age as she. That really put the Civil War into perspective for me! To have her be a woman of similar age, it took away the feeling of, “this is just something bad that happened to us before I was born.” It made me wonder if we’d do it again today, and how it would impact this country. It made the Civil War more personal.

I appreciated that the main character purchased her freedom. She didn’t need President Lincoln to emancipate her. Yet she admired and appreciated all President Lincoln did while in office. I enjoyed the perspective.

At our book group, there was some discussion as to her ability to write back in the 1800’s as a former slave. I choose to believe that she could write well because of her former owners and her ability to run a solid business. True or not, it’s what I find true in my heart.

I find it interesting that at the time of reading this book, I’d recently seen the movie about President Lincoln. Soon after the book I saw “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. Both shared facts in common with this book, real history, and were entertaining – just as this book had some page turning moments.

Lastly, I hope you enjoy it too!