Continuing the Tender Ties Historical Series, Every Fixed Star brings readers more of the dramatic, fictionalized account of Marie Dorion: the real-life woman who was the first mother to cross the Rocky Mountains and remain in the Northwest. In Book Two of the series, Marie learns the value of a tender heart, the faith of distant friends, and the act of holding life’s circumstances in open hands.
Following the family tragedy, the great battle for survival, and the test of faith described in A Name of Her Own, Marie relocates her family to the Pacific Northwest territory’s Okanogan settlement. The year is 1814 and, as is customary of her life out West, Marie faces constant challenges simply to keep her children clothed and fed.
Yet inside each challenge awaits a gift to be unwrapped. Countless times, Marie has proven herself a survivor. Incredibly, she must now endure further realizations of a woman’s fears: an abrupt ending to love, distance from friends, the disappearance of one child, the consequences of another’s poor choices.
Through it all, Marie is tempted to believe that she doesn’t deserve God’s love in the everyday places. When blessings arrive, she struggles to accept them, fearing they will be followed by more difficult challenges. But ultimately, the threads of past friendships and their prayers, a faithful love, and her own service to others all lead her to God’s gift of a full and abundant life.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Sexual Content - 1/5
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Violence - 2/5
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Language - 0/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 0/5
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Summary
Review by Susan. Overall The second book of the Tender Ties series invites the reader into a time and place true to history but utterly foreign to the modern reader. Kirkpatrick does her usual superior job of combining a foreign way of thinking and expression with familiar problems and considerations. The woman in this book is strong in ways that few of us will ever have to be but she deals with many of the same feelings and struggles. Married and widowed several times, she deals with the men in her life with a mixture of wisdom and confusion. Her sons suffer from dysfunctions brought on by suffering in their childhood and she wonders if she has been a good mother to them, just as modern women do when their children struggle. This book is fascinating and interesting. Historylovers will particularly enjoy it as it examines a notoften discussed part
of the taming of a wild and unforgiving West.
Violence There a few incidents of violence common to the history of that time they are not unnecessarily graphic although at least one was fairly vivid.