Helpful Score: 3
This is a gem of a book, reminiscent of Mark Twain in its understated humor and wry look at human nature. Sixteen-year-old Shay Cecil is uprooted from the life he's known when his mother, Mary Margaret, decides to uproot her brood and go in search of her "travelin' man" husband. Along the way, they meet a variety of characters, and Shay learns a lot more about life in general and his family in particular than he ever expected to know.
Helpful Score: 1
from the back cover, "Probably his best 'western' since Lonesome Dove.
Helpful Score: 1
In the backwater town of Boone's Lick, Missouri, Mary Margaret has finally had it with her ne'er-do-well husband, Dickie - whose job supplying forts along the Oregon Trail gives him ample opportunity to be swayed out of his wedding vows. Determined to set things aright, she collects her children - along with the rest of her cantankerous kin - and makes her way West on a comic journey of epic proportions. Encountering every peril of life on the trail, Mary Margaret is about to show them all why hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
