Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Title: Sweet Home Alaska Author: Carole Estby Dagg Publication Info: Nancy Paulson Books, 2016. 298 pages, Kindle edition Source: Library digital resources (Overdrive) Publisher's Blurb: Terpsichore can’t wait to follow in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s footsteps . . . now she just has to convince her mom. It’s 1934, and times are tough for their family. To make a fresh start, Terpsichore’s father signs up for President Roosevelt’s Palmer Colony project, uprooting them from Wisconsin to become pioneers in Alaska. Their new home is a bit of a shock—it’s a town still under construction in the middle of the wilderness, where the residents live in tents and share a community outhouse. But Terpsichore’s not about to let first impressions get in the way of this grand adventure. Tackling its many unique challenges with her can-do attitude, she starts making things happen to make Alaska seem more like home. Soon, she and her family are able to start settling in and enjoying their new su...

Title: Trials of the Earth: The True Story of a Pioneer Woman Author: Mary Mann Hamilton; narrated by Barbara Benjamin Creel Publisher: Hachette Audio, 2016. Originally published 1992 by University Press of Mississippi, 259 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Summary: This wrenching memoir of love, courage, and survival was waiting to he told. Withheld for almost a lifetime, it is a tragic story of a woman's trial of surviving against brutal odds. Near the end of her life Mary Hamilton (1866-c.1936) was urged to record this astonishing narrative. It is the only known first-hand account by an ordinary woman depicting the extraordinary routines demanded in this time and this place. She reveals the unbelievably arduous role a woman played in the taming of the Delta wilderness, a position marked by unspeakably harsh, bone-breaking toil. On a raw November day in 1932 Helen Dick Davis entered a backwoods cabin in the Delta and encountered Mary Hamilton, a t...

Today, I'm doing two books at once. I listened to the audio back-to-back, repeating the first book, which I read several years ago, in order to have the context for the second book.     Titles: Our Only May Amelia and The Trouble with May Amelia Author: Jennifer L. Holm; read by Emmy Rossum & Maria Dalbotten, respectively. Publishers: Harper Collins 2001, and Atheneum, 2011. Audio editions by Listening Library, 2007 and 2012. Source: Library Summary: Our Only May Amelia: May Amelia struggles along as the only girl in the whole pioneering settlement along the Nasel River in Washington State. Having seven brothers doesn't help, nor does the fact that in spite of all this, everyone somehow expects her to be a  proper young lady. But she's looking forward to that changing, with the birth of a new baby in the family! It might even be enough to compensate for Grandma's moving in with them. The Trouble with May Amelia: A year along, or thereabouts, May is still strugg...