And what reader wouldn’t appreciate someone with a burning desire to read. What a fabulous character! Sarah is courageous, sometimes audacious, smart and loving.

I always love reading about strong women no matter when they lived, but there is something particularly special about Sarah Agnes Prine as we follow her and her family and others on their journey to stake a claim in Arizona Territory in the late nineteenth century. For me that made it all the more meaningful. Perhaps some of that feeling is because the book was inspired by the author’s great grandmother.

Incredible story telling in the form of a diary makes this novel feel so real, as if it were a memoir. And yet I watched her grapple with the same issues I deal with every day - love and heartache, the joy and exhaustion that come from motherhood, wanting to do it all and all at once - and I realized that although times and circumstances may vary greatly, a woman's heart remains largely the same. I felt worlds away from that life, wondering if I could have done it, if I myself had the same kind of strength and courage that Sarah exhibits. I was captivated by the hardships and struggles that she endured just to survive - Indians, robbers, wild animals and the elements to name a few. It is the beautiful and heartbreaking story of a woman growing up in the Arizona Territories in the late 1800s written as accounts from her diary (based on the memoirs of the author's great-grandmother). I shed many a tear and towards the end was so enraged I almost threw the book, but I simply cannot stop thinking about it! I'm dying to discuss it with someone. I was completely taken by this book! The library fines are racking up because it is overdue and I can't renew it because it has been requested by someone else, but I can't let it go because I find myself going back to it to reread passages and 'reliving' moments of the book in my mind.

These is my words by nancy turner