One For The Blackbird One For The Crow

Welcome to my stop on the One For The Blackbird One For The Crow blog tour!

Four graves behind her. Four graves at four different farms, faded marks on the map of her life, tracing the route of her forced march out into this bleak wilderness. From Wisconsin to Minnesota to Nebraska, then to the eastern plains of Wyoming and finally here, under the merciless eye of the Bighorns. One Webber grave lay here already – the fifth monument to Nettie Mae’s losses. She never deigned to visit Substance’s final resting place, but she could feel its nearness.

Wyoming, 1876. The Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other for as long as they have lived in this unforgiving wilderness. But when Cora is found with Substance – Nettie Mae’s husband – Ernest kills him, leaving two families without the men who ran their homesteads.

This is a story of love, loss, betrayal, survival, and ultimately friendship. Told from multiple points of view, this thick book flies by. I appreciated the glimpse into each characters motives and thoughts – this is what drove the book forward and allowed the reader to connect with the characters.

Beulah and Clyde are the teens left to help their mothers care for their farms. For a moment, I rolled my eyes over what was inevitably coming. But by the time it happened, I was so enmeshed with the characters, especially Beulah, that I was pleased to read about their budding relationship.

The writing had a prose-like quality to it and the multiple POV story worked very well for this plot. The characters were richly developed and flawed as they were, I loved something about each one of them. Hawker does a fantastic job of balancing the utter desperation of the story with the story itself. She left plenty of room for connecting with the character while still understanding just how dire the needs of these two families were.

If you enjoyed Where The Crawdads Sing, The Dovekeepers, or Inland (not my favorite), you will most likely love One For The Blackbird One For The Crow

Available for purchase at your local bookstore or:

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble