From up the back cover:
Tabitha Brown refuses to be left behind in Missouri when her son makes the
decision to strike out for Oregon - even if she has to hire her own wagon to
join the party. After all, family ties
are stronger than fear. Along with her reluctant daughter and her ever-hopeful
granddaughter, the intrepid Tabitha has her misgivings. The trials they face along the way will
severely test her faith, courage, and ability to hope. With her family’s survival on the line, she
must make the ultimate sacrifice, plunging deeper into the wilderness to seek
aid. What she couldn’t know was how this
frightening journey would impact how she understood her own life - and the
greater part she had to play in history.
This is the first book I’ve read by Jane Kirkpatrick
but it didn’t disappoint. Given the fact
that it is based on a real person makes the history even more poignant. Tabitha
Brown was 66 years old when she took her family on the Oregon Trail. She was a
widow with three children and trying too make sense of her life. She had been disabled and lame since she was
a child and had grown up knowing both good times and bad. She was both a woman, a wife and mother, a
grandmother, and a storyteller. She
built an orphanage and then developed a school and university. She financed her own wagon she shared with
her brother-in-law, when their small party headed out west on the Oregon Trail. This book is a wonderful story of who she was,
what she became, and the history of the State of Oregon.
***** Stars
Publisher: Revell, a Division of Baker House
Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780800722333
I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for
an honest review.
