Starred Review ALA Booklist (Mon May 08 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Starred Review Loosely based on her ancestors' history as Latter Day Saints homesteaders in Canada's Northwest Territories, Leavitt's heartfelt novel opens in the year 1890 with her protagonist, 17-yearold Rebecca, sitting next to God and contemplating the beauty of the landscape. If sitting thus seems impossible, so is Rebecca's determination to have land of her own, as it's illegal for a single woman to own land. Though perhaps she won't be single much longer. There are two young men in Rebecca's life: Coby, practical, warm, and safe; and handsome Levi, who has a way of making naughtiness seem all right. Rebecca's story is beautifully written ("the mountains glowed as if they'd swallowed the moon") and its treatment of setting, superb, while the plot is an impressive balance of the quotidian Dominion Day celebration, marriage, birth d the exceptional: a flood that carries the family's house away, a blizzard that threatens Coby's life, and a plague of the grippe that brings death to the community. As for Leavitt (Calvin, 2015), she brings all of her characters to vivid life llful, stubborn Rebecca, of course, but also her parents, stoic Father and slightly too perfect Mother. A vivid celebration of life and insightful exploration of faith, this novel proves the enduring importance of sometimes undervalued historical fiction for YAs.

Horn Book (Fri Jan 13 00:00:00 CST 2023)

Based on family history, Leavitt's coming-of-age story is set in an 1890s Mormon settler community in Southern Alberta, Canada, at the eastern edges of the Rockies, and focuses on seventeen-year-old Rebecca. In an opening both startling and humorous, Leavitt begins: "Rebecca had heard her father and others call this land God's country often enough that she wasn't as surprised as she might have been to come upon him...He was dressed in his work clothes, but you knew God when you saw him." It's fitting that many of Rebecca's consequent ups-and-downs are driven by the desire to own the very piece of "God's country" that she finds so beautiful -- an ­outlandish ambition for a woman. With her mother's support, she determines to earn the exorbitant $480 it will cost to buy the quarter section; in the meantime, her close-knit family and community offer rich, unpredictable ground for her efforts to learn and live with integrity -- and without complaining. Ventures into midwifery and nursing with her mother; ­calamities of weather, domestic violence, and a devastating flu; ­competition for romance and talk of women's suffrage: all are fodder for Rebecca's articulate, funny ­self-examination and deepening growth. Always sensitive to the ­beauties of earth and sky, Rebecca longs for a return of the elk and buffalo, part of the author's tacit ­acknowledgment of local Indigenous peoples and the damage wrought by white ­expansion. Leavitt's writing is suffused with the beauty of the earth and sky. Deirdre F. Baker

School Library Journal (Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Gr 6 Up— Seventeen-year-old Rebecca wants to own her own land. The problem is that she is a woman in the 1890s in the Northwest Territories of Canada and isn't allowed to purchase property. Rebecca is determined to work around that by earning enough money to pay her father who can then buy the land and put her name on it. This certainly comes with challenges, ones she could have never imagined. This novel gives readers a good picture of what life was like in the west for a young woman of the Latter-Day Saints faith at the end of the 19th century, the types of chores she was responsible for every day, and how she socialized. Rebecca is a strong and confident character who works hard to get what she wants and isn't intimidated by the fact that women are seen as "a person in matters of pains and penalties, but not in matters of rights and privileges." The author uses language and certain terminology that will make readers feel as if they have been transported to the 1800s. VERDICT This title would be an excellent addition to any YA historical fiction collection.— Elizabeth Gold