2013 book 294

Benedict and Nancy Freedman's Mrs Mike
I think my life is complete now that Mrs Mike is available for Kindle, b/c my old childhood copy is falling apart. I read this SO many times when I was a kid--it was one of the many books that my mom loved and gave me to read. I thought it was SO romantic (both in terms of romantic love and romanticizing the wilderness lifestyle), though it is really, really grim at times (it's also very funny at times). It's about 16 year old Kathy, an Irish Bostonian, who travels up to Canada in 1907 for her health and immediately meets and marries a hot Mountie. Then they go deep into the wilds of Canada to start a life. It's (in theory) based on a true story! But, because it was written in 1947, it's amazingly racist/paternalistic about the indigenous population. So that's kind of a downer. Apparently a couple of sequels were written in the early 2000s, and they look terrible, so I'll just keep rereading this one over and over. Way better than the Little House books.