AMERICAN DIARIES Part 3

Celou's book is one of those where I can't find a great picture. She's way prettier in her art than this makes her look.

Celou is half French trapper and half Shoshone. Her father has journeyed away on some trapping thingy while her mother stays with Celou, the eldest, and her brothers who are 10 and an infant.

When some Crow come to cause trouble, it's up to Celou to save the day, which she does by using her brains. Celou's pretty damn awesome and this is a great book. Kaya would look up to Celou and her quick thinking and bravery.

Summer is possibly my favorite of these 19 girls. She's an indentured servant who's being wrongly accused of theft by the younger daughter of the house who used to be her close friend. Well, Summer's not having it and she spends the entire book trying to solve the mystery despite a lot of problems. She comes out well in the end, having proven what happened, her innocence and how the younger daughter set her up to take the blame for her own stupidity. She also comes away from the day determined to be successful when she finally finished her indenture and even save up money to buy the freedom of some of the household's slaves. She's awesome.

Agnes has the most unfortunate cover design. It says right in the beginning of the book that her hair is short and she does pincurls. Well, her hair on the cover is definitely not that. So it irritates me a lot.

Anyway, poor Agnes has a hell of a rough day. Her father steps on a nail and her mother has to take him to get it xrayed, so they're going to be gone until evening the next day.

Well, they run a dairy farm. Despite her mom telling her to dump the day's milk, Agnes figures out a way to milk all the cows, chill the milk, bottle it, crate it, get it all into the horse-drawn wagon, and deliver it with only herself and her two younger siblings doing the work.

Then her dad comes home while they're about to go on the morning run and he goes off about what they did wrong, not a word of thanks on them not losing the day's earnings. Agnes thankfully blows up at her father, blames him for her older brother running off because he never felt appreciated and essentially, with the help of her mom, forces him to thank all the kids for their hard work. He gets over it a bit by the end, but he's still a douche.

Amelina has the last of the first style of cover and she's a bit of a mystery, because I'm not sure this cover actually exists. On the copy I have, her art is different and the town is different.

Even the year is different. This one to the right says 1870, when the actual book is 1863 during the war.

See?

That's the cover I have down below, so something tells me Amelina's story got worked over, then they changed the cover to the new style with the new town and year. And bonnet style.

Amelina lives in a Cajun community and her life there is a bit interesting, although they don't go much into it. She's an orphan who lives with her widower uncle, who's gone a lot of the time, so even though she's young, she runs a household by herself and basically lives by herself.

Her adventure is coming across a wounded Union soldier and helping him survive, even defying her asshole uncle to do so. I was glad when they finally touched on the subject of slavery. The Cajuns there are against it. We already had a pro-South Civil War book and we really didn't need another. Although honestly, we've got another one coming up. Not one Northern girl during the Civil War but THREE Southern ones. At least this one's got her head on right. (And not one Asian girl, but all these stupid Civil War books. Ugh. So annoying.)