ALA Booklist

This lightweight, agreeable novel is set in the late nighteenth century. Twelve-year-old Rachel loves the Dakota prairie, but her widowed father struggles against drought on their farm, and finally sends Rachel and her younger brother, John Wesley, to Savannah to stay the summer with their mother's sister, Aggie. Aggie lives in a fine house (and has suffragist leanings) but the children long for their home. When Pa comes to take them back and announces he is marrying again, Rachel is furious and sets up a number of fairly predictable obstacles that go awry. Of course, Pa marries the schoolteacher anyway, Rachel is reconciled, and the rain does come. The lightly sketched historical setting is laid out with a nice use of language; 10-year-old John Wesley is a madcap foil to his older sister; and their mother's presence through her paintings and letters is well-handled. (Reviewed April 1, 2000)

Horn Book (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2000)

Determined to stay on his South Dakota farm despite drought and despair, Rachel's father sends the children to stay with their aunt. Letters and a painting stored in the aunt's house reconnect Rachel to the mother she barely remembers, but returning home, she learns that Pa plans to marry the local schoolmarm. The tidy conclusion turns sentimental, but many readers will find the book a pleasing diversion.

Kirkus Reviews

Twelve-year-old Rachel, devastated to learn of her father's impending nuptials to the local school teacher, devises a cunning plan to drive her away. The story takes place at the end of the 19th century in the Dakotas, where a yearlong drought has devastated the family farm. The extreme shortage of water compels their father to send Rachel and her brother to Atlanta to stay with their aunt. Although their mother died several years earlier, a discovery of her letters about her courtship and early marriage while staying in her childhood home reawakens the pain of losing her. Rachel is shocked when, close on the heels of these revelations, their father declares his intent to remarry. The plot moves in a predictable fashion; Rachel's anger manifests itself in a rash act, resulting in sobering consequences that in turn calm her raging emotions and enable her to welcome her stepmother with equanimity. Rachel's budding talent as an artist, inherited from her mother, lifts this tale beyond the ordinary. Love's ( I Remember the Alamo , 1999) descriptions of Rachel's artistry give readers a view of the world from an artist's perspective: "In the background was Mama's grave, a green rectangle beneath the shady poplar trees. I'd painted the river and the sheep grazing in a spring meadow, and the brown ribbon of road unspooling toward the horizon." Love handles the emotionally charged subject with compassion tempered with honesty; there are no saints here, adult or child, just raw feelings that will strike a sympathetic chord in reader's hearts. An absorbing period piece addressing a universal theme with which contemporary readers can readily identify and which is spared mediocrity by Love's eloquent prose. (Fiction. 8-11)

School Library Journal

Gr 4-6-Twelve-year-old Rachel's first-person narrative will quickly draw readers into this story of a tenacious family on the drought-stricken Dakota prairie a century ago. The author's poetic language provides sensuous descriptions of Midwestern life: the rattle of dry corn stalks, the smell of new lambs. When the drought shows no signs of letting up, Rachel and her nine-year-old brother, John Wesley, are sent to visit their aunt in Georgia. There they reminisce about their mother, who died four years before, as they find her clothes, letters, and paintings in her family's home. The themes of loss and renewal are carried out on a human level as the children's father marries their teacher. Rachel acts out her resentment by attempting to convince the woman that the life of a prairie wife is too hard for her, with near-tragic results. Only when she realizes that her father needs companionship does Rachel accept the idea of a new stepmother. This tale of moving painfully toward the acceptance of change transcends its historical setting. It is simply yet artfully told with characters both realistic and endearing, and should appeal to readers who enjoyed Patricia MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall (HarperCollins, 1985).-Valerie Diamond, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.