DEAR AMERICA: Civil War Round 1

My plan for these big topics is to lump all the books together as much as I can, but due to my need to read the books chronologically, that gets thrown off. The next one is a Dear Canada about the gold rush set in 1862, so I figured I'd review this one first, then the Dear Canada, then start lumping the Civl War ones together, although glancing down the titles, it's going to be a broken up series of entries anyway!

It's been months since I've done a Dear America. I took a break from them to try to get through some of my other piles of books, but I'm itching for some historical, so I'd like to get all these done. Although I'm sure I'll still be taking breaks along the way. I do intend to finish the most recent Goddess Girls book and review it soon, but it's good and I want to drag it out a bit.

Amelia has a lot on her plate. This book isn't about the Civil War so much as how it affected her family as it started up. Amelia's father is an assistant lighthouse keeper on an island and Amelia does about a third of the lighthouse work. Her mother suffers from I believe arthritis and who even knows what else. She's a wreck. The mother and grandmother are rather nasty pro-slavery characters, while the father is on the side of abolition, but he's not a great character either, as he's very distant and only comes around at the end. So at home, Amelia has her lighthouse duties and basic household duties, since her mother is useless 90% of the time. She also rows into town and goes to school, but also teaches younger kids, helps her grandmother and visits her uncle, who runs a shop in town. Her uncle's the smart one in the family, an abolitionist whose wife is a former slave.

Early on in the book, Amelia loses her prospective love interest to an accident, but his brother steps up later on.

The book is like half weather reports and half annoying family drama with a smidge of "oh, hey, the Civil War" thrown in. No wonder I put it down and strayed from DA for so long! And yet it was one of the ones chosen for the new cover reissue. Who knows? Maybe others liked it more than I did. It's a very light beginning to the heavier Civil War stuff to come.

And now, the Gold Rush. Even after such a long break, I cannot escape these trail books!