Review: One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

ABL Review At-a-Glance

Title: One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow
My Rating: 4.5
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Author:  Olivia Hawker
Format:  Hardcover ARC*
Publication Date: October 8, 2019

Blurb

From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.

My Thoughts…

I love books that can transport you to another time and place, and One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow does this amazingly.

There are lots of things I could talk about with this book, but what I really found remarkable were the characters. I went in expecting some very hardworking pioneers, but didn’t realize the depth and expanse of the cast of characters, especially the women.

Normally, if you read a book that starts with one woman sleeping with another woman’s husband, your sympathy for each character is pretty well settled. Olivia Hawker brilliantly weaves each character’s strengths and weaknesses so that you are never quite sure how you feel. Nattie Mae and Cora were such real women with completely relatable emotions in some pretty extraordinary circumstances.

Then there is Beulah. It’s not often that characters truly surprise me or seem genuinely unique, but Beulah did and is. I was never sure what she was going to do or say, and her slightly supernatural abilities made for a very interesting read.

While both grity and sad at times, One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow is also inspiring and unlike anything I have read in a long time. I was both enchanted and unnerved.

*Special thanks to Olivia Hawker, Lake Union Publishing, and TLC Book Tours for a copy of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow in exchange for an honest review.