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Marmee and Caroline posted by Robyn

In Marmee and Caroline, author Sarah Miller takes on the perspective of two beloved classic literary mothers. 

Marmee: a novel of Little Women is her newest book.  Told in diary format with a style reminiscent of Little Women, the well-known story by Louisa May Alcott is retold through a mother’s eyes.  There is extra detail in the account of the Civil War battlegrounds and slave treatment – Alcott’s family were known abolitionists and this filters into this fictional novel where the Marches take in a runaway slave.  Miller takes minor characters from the classic and develops them in this retelling – readers have a deeper understanding to the poverty stricken Hummel family, loyal housekeeper and friend Hannah, and cantankerous Aunt March.

In Caroline: Little House Revisited, the reader gets the perspective of Caroline Ingalls, mother to Laura and Mary of the beloved Little House children's books.  The story starts as the family is leaving the big woods of Wisconsin, and in a first-person account, Caroline tells of the daily hardships of travelling by covered wagon with two small children and another on the way.  The story reads much like the children’s classic of Little House on the Prairie, but from a parental viewpoint.  Difficult travel, building a homestead, environmental threats, Indians, neighbors, are just a few of the many hardships the family faced.

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Robyn’s Picks, Historical Fiction

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