Widow 1881 by Sara Dahmen

Widow 1881

by Sara Dahmen

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GENRE:   Women's Historical Pioneer Fiction

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BLURB:

Boston widow Jane Weber moves to the Dakota Territories to save her respectability but finds her proper views challenged every step. Rooming with the last Blackfoot Sioux in Flats Junction and navigating a mercurial friendship with the fiercely independent town grocer leaves Jane reeling as she stumbles to understand the town folk and the unwritten rules of the west in 1881. Everyone has a story, including Jane herself and her unpredictable physician employer. 

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 Excerpt :

Suppose it is not real. I have not yet felt the quickening. It is early yet – too early to really discuss it. For this employer to know, when my lover had not and my husband could not, feels as if I am exposing my private bedroom to a stranger. 

Terror shoots into me. I hadn’t wanted him to find out! Not so soon and not like this! Damn the Widow! I’d asked her not to speak! Now he will send me back home to be a widowed mother alone in the quietness of my parents’ house and the sharp stigma of the loose widow. No one back east will truly believe the child is Henry’s. They might think I went wild in the west.

No one knows me here. There is some safety in it, and I must convince him to let me stay. And I must tell him the same lie. There’s no other way. Everyone here in Flats Junction must think I was as married and settled as I say. And the Doctor too – what would he think having hired such a loose woman? The shame of my brief, quick desire for Theodore, and the self-loathing I carry rises up and tries to choke me. The Doctor walks away from me, fuming and vibrating with anger and I feel I must follow him to hear my fate.

My heart is beating slowly, pulsing with each step. Will I faint? Will I be able to hold my head to his and beg him? Can I spit out the story I’ve told myself so often that it almost feels true? And will he believe it?

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Sara Dahmen is a metalsmith of vintage and modern cookware and manufactures pure

metal kitchenware in tin, copper and iron. She is the owner and operator of House Copper & Housekeeper Crockery: American-made cookware created with pure and/or organic materials featured in Food and Wine and Root + Bone magazines, among others. She has published over 100 articles as a contributing editor for Veil Magazine and writes for many book and review blogs. She has spoken at TEDx Rapid City in 2016, speaks across the country at multiple writer conferences such as the Writer’s Institute and RWA Nationals, and co-chairs the Port Washington Literary Festival since its inception in 2013. Prior to her writing gigs, Sara was a print, radio and TV producer before owning and operating a nationally award-winning event planning company for ten years. When not writing or sewing authentic clothing for 1830’s reenactments, she can be found hitting tin and copper at her apprenticeship with a master tinsmith, reading the Economist or hanging out with her husband and three young children.

Websites:

 www.flatsjunction.com

www.saradahmen.com

www.housecopper.com

Blog:

http://www.housekeepercrockery.com/housekeepers-notebook/

Twitter: @saradahmenbooks

Instagram: @housecrockery

!Buy link unavailable but can be found through websites above!

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION:

Sara Dahmen will be awarding a set of American-made pure maple wooden spoons from the author's kitchenware line (www.housekeepercrockery), valued at $60 (international) to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

REVIEW: 
This is a first-person narrated story about a widow who goes out west to the Dakota Territory in 1881 to be a housekeeper for a doctor. She travels to Flats Junction, where we are also introduced to a feisty general store owner, Kate, and to Jane's Sioux landlady, Widow Hawks. Jane's work for the doctor includes some nursing, cooking, working in the house and garden, and secretary.  To the reader, it is obvious the doctor has fallen for Jane, but she has a secret that must be revealed - she's carrying a child, the fruit of a passionate fling that she had after her husband's death. The author has done her research and the patterns of speech, the settlers' prejudices against the Native Americans, and the settings are brought to life in this captivating story. There are details about everyday life on the frontier,  but most of all, this is a love story between a woman who is stronger than she thinks she is, and a man who will give up everything to win the heart of the one he's chosen. I think all lovers of historical fiction and historical romance will enjoy this book!