MY AMERICA & DEAR AMERICA: Revolutionary War

The Winter of Red Snow is one of the big name Dear America books. It was the second in the series, following Mem's book. It is also the only book in the series to receive a sequel, which was part of the second run of the series in 2011.

I commend Kristiana Gregory for tying a bunch of stuff together, because I'm not sure I realized it at the time, but characters from this book appear in her My America trilogy set during the same war.

Hope's trilogy (Five Smooth Stones, We Are Patriots and When Freedom Comes) are actually set earlier, so I began my reread with them. I had to wait a bit to start, because somehow, I hadn't realized there was a third book and I was missing it! Hope's books are pretty good, but not as strong as Elizabeth's, the first My America series I reread. It was fun to see Abigail and Lucy there for a brief moment though. I never caught that before, or if I did, I'd long since forgotten.

As for Abigail's book, it's all right. It's not one of my favorites. It's one of those ones where it seems a little too convenient for the family to be that close to all the action. Abby's mother is acting as laundress for the Washingtons while the winter in Valley Forge.

Abby, where's your cap?

The reissue cover I don't care for. My problem with a lot of these, despite being lovely art, is that the girls look a trifle too modern and far too old. That's not the face of an eleven-year-old. Abby also always wears her cap, so seeing her without it is weird. I think the picture chosen for the original book is a better Abby.

Then there's movie Abby.

And she also looks too old.

I don't remember the movie, but I probably watched it. Iceman from the X-Men films played the older sister's would-eventually-be husband. Ha.

Abby was one of the lucky foursome to become a doll. I had her for a brief time, before she left to live with a friend.

Abby and Caty

Now we can move on to the sequel. This was just weird. It's hard to read a sequel when the epilogue at the end of the first book told you what happened to some of the characters, though I was always annoyed it didn't tell you all of them, so at least the epilogue filled that out a smidge more. But only a smidge. I honestly have to say that I was bored. Abby's house burns down so she and her family become camp followers...for YEARS. So it's boring daily life and sad deaths and kids getting married at 15 and *shudder* It's hard to read about the girl who you think of as a little girl in her first book being not just married but hugely pregnant at the end of the second. At fifteen years old. It happened, especially during wartime, but the disjoint is still pretty massive.

Although now her cover art makes me feel better, because at least she looks fifteen!

I think you could easily skip the sequel. Abby's growing relationship is kinda cute, but it's no Snowbird captures Snow Hunter.