A Novel with Thoughts and Ponderings

WISHES ON WATER

Author: Dana George ISBN: 0843954493 9/2004 HISTORICAL Publisher: Dorchester - Leisure
Time Period: Iowa 1856

Wishes on Water by Dana GeorgeSadie...

Invited by the kindly frontiersman, the Gardners, Sadie Pritchard jumped at the offer to convalesce with her boys in the abandoned cabin on the lake. But then its owner returned. Sadie's past had been hard, with the wagon train and her husband, and this giant seemed just as dangerous—until she looked in his eyes and met his infant girl.

Mac...

After four months on the road, all Sam MacCallister wanted was to return to Lake Okoboji. Little did he expect the scarecrow of a woman and her two sons who awaited him. Little more did her expect them to steal his heart.

Home...

In 1856, Calhoun County, Iowan, was a dangerous place. With the stirrings of an anguished Sioux nation and the secrets of Sadie's past threatening to surface, trouble was inevitable. But to Mac and Sadie, together, no matter how hard any journey, Lake Okoboji was the place to return to, a place that promised fulfillment of all their...Wishes on Water.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS: 4 Rose Read

This is the hardest review I have ever written. Not because the book, WISHES ON WATER, by Dana George is a bad read—just the opposite, in fact. It's a good book with a fresh love story (the heroine isn't a virgin, but a mother - wow!) and some likeable characters. However, the vivid pictures my imagination conjures up when I read the parts about the Sioux Indian raid are...horrifying. It is so very detailed in places that it truly makes my stomach hurt. As a matter of fact, some of the brutality depicted in it gave me nightmares about my own children, and a book like that is tough to take for anyone.

As a fellow native of Michigan, I have to give Dana George kudos for writing a book that evokes such emotions. It's tough to get the reader to visualize everything you want them to, but George does a superb job of it. Too good, in fact. Her story involves new settlers in Calhoun County, Iowa, and the Sioux Indians already there, in a tug of war for survival. There is, slightly in the beginning, a love story and I believe it's based on actual events.

As a reader of historical westerns, I thought I could imagine how awful an Indian raid might have been. Boy, did I think wrong. That part of the story overshadows everything else the book has to offer. At times I had to put the book down and walk away from it. The slaughter written about here was just too much. Though I realize the intent was to stick to the real events as much as possible, I believe I would like to go back to having blinders on and simply have an author gloss over the most graphic parts of those times. Especially in a romance book.

Shannon Johnson

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