Dorothy Love (1)

The underlying history for this novel - the relationship between the wife of Robert E. Lee and an enslaved woman - is fascinating and made me want to know more. This novel itself, however, felt meandering and seemed to shy away from the most interesting and controversial pieces of history. The nuances and motivations in a relationship between a white women and an enslaved black women during the Civil War felt absent to me and I concluded this book with more questions than answers about these two women (which is fine when one is writing nonfiction, but novels have license to fill in some of those gaps).… (meer)

I have read the entire Hickory Ridge Series by Dorothy Love. The main character of Every Perfect Gift is Sophie Caldwell. I enjoyed the first twp books of this series more because I did not like the ending of this book as much.

Sophie had her doubts whether returning to Hickory Ridge was a good idea or not. When she was growing up in the orphanage, she only had ragged clothes to wear, and she was teased that she might be a mulatto. No knowledge of how or why she was put in the orphanage, she felt inferior to the other children. But she was adopted and raised by a loving couple. Sophie had always been a good storyteller, and she had a plan to revive the old newspaper in town. She interviewed Ethan Heyward who hired to build Blue Smoke, a resort, and over time fell in love with him.

Ethan had a secret about a horrible thing that happened when he was and a falling with his step-brother. He, like Sophie, did not know what really happened in his past and this came between the young couple until later in the book.

What I most liked about the book was the wonderful friendship that developed between Sophie and Gillie, who was determined to set up an infirmary with the local doctor to help the town people and beyond. They had a mutual admiration for their determination and their desire to help others.

Besides that, I enjoyed reading about Sophie dealing with the old printing press, how hard labor was required to keep it running and the mess of the ink that went with it. It really showed how much she wanted to be a journalist.

I did enjoy the story very much, but I would have written a different ending!… (meer)