Hello everyone!
Now granted, there ARE two more, but as I said in a previous blog post, I won't be reviewing them for this blog because I never enjoyed them all that much in the first place since the characters didn't grab me quite so well as Elizabeth and Wynn.
Jack and Elizabeth filled that spot on the television show, but even that's changed somewhat now.
But I digress!
We've been trudging through the wilderness for the past few books, so it's really high time to find out just how Elizabeth's story concludes.
Does the fashionable teacher from Toronto manage to completely overcome her own prejudices and become the woman Wynn could see was a possibility when he fell in love with her? And do they find happiness in the north?
All that, and more, will be answered in When Hope Springs New.
As always, links to the rest of the connected works will be found at the bottom of this page, but you're welcome to just browse my blog as well, of course!
In a very, VERY brief recap, we can say Elizabeth Thatcher came from Toronto to help teach schoolchildren in need, which was how she met Wynn, fell in love, married him, and ended up going with him to his posting in the north. Their first sojourn at Beaver River was largely successful (not counting a massive fire and illness outbreak), but the then-RCMP gave them ANOTHER posting, a new one, further north at Smoke Lake.
This is where When Hope Springs New begins.
And listen, if you thought that Beaver River was primitive in some aspects and certainly far away from what Elizabeth might have been used to even in Calgary, Smoke Lake is, in those terms, even more backwards.
Now before you get all up in arms, I use the terms primitive and backwards VERY loosely - for the natives there, it was perfect and it was their way of life, but to the WHITE view it was definitely both of what I have just described. We simply were not raised that way and thus we find it different, but it doesn't mean that there's anything about it we should change.
Yeah I believe in non-colonization, and all that jazz.
On with the show!
Wynn, as the local lawman, goes back to his work relatively easy once they establish their small home (so small, in fact, that they can't even unpack all the things they had in Beaver River), but Elizabeth faces more challenges here than before.
She doesn't like the trader, LaMeche, the local women draw away in fright when she goes near, and she's virtually all alone except for Kip.
So at least she's going to have a garden, right? She asks Wynn to dig it for her, and they pick a spot which is an island in the river, and it turns out that it used to be the home of a shaman who had tried taking control of the tribe there, but ended up killed for his actions, so the ground is taboo for the people there.
Ah well, nothing to be done about it now, so Wynn also tethers his sleigh dogs there to keep away unwanted visitors, and Elizabeth spends a lot of time with them, too.
She might never have made any headway at all - most of the book is her struggle to become part of the community like she was in Beaver River - if not for a massive drought one summer, Wynn's absence on a trip that takes him away for a few days, and a large forest fire that comes roaring towards the settlement.
Elizabeth springs into action and energizes the people to grab what they can and run to the lake where they'll weather the fire in the water, which is what saves them, and then she somehow becomes the de facto leader of their little deprived settlement until the chief and his braves return from hunting as well.
She's the one who organizes everything, from food to shelter, and gives even the little she has away so that others wouldn't go hungry, and in the course of this becomes friends with the other women from the settlement, as well as LaMeche, her only male ally in the situation until the braves return.
She also rises high in the rankings of the Chief, who wants to give her his youngest child as reward, but she turns him down, skillfully navigating the conversation so that he helps her order the braves to do what needs doing.
She yearns for Wynn though, and is ecstatic once he returns to take over, so the two of them then work in tandem, not to mention that Wynn sends swift riders out to the nearest posting so that there might be some help from his superiors given the situation.
Once help DOES arrive, however, Wynn and Elizabeth have to leave Smoke Lake, as they are ordered to go to Alberta, while a younger, single Mountie will take Wynn's posting during construction and the like.
So they leave LaMeche, who finally plucked up the courage to ask a young widow to be his wife, and two girls (orphans) in their care, moving back to what could be a huge step back towards civilization given what they've been used to.
In Alberta, they join the church and offer to help as pianist and singer, not to mention Sunday school, where Wynn takes on the boys and Elizabeth the girls, and they run into their own fair share of problems as well, so it isn't just the north that's problematic, obviously.
Elizabeth gives a piece of her mind to an arrogant and rude single father, and there's trouble with a large family of I think twelve children, but in the end it all sorts itself out as the two of them adopt Henry, the youngest of the bunch, who the rest had left behind when they couldn't find him (he hid).
They also meet a Native pastor, who is looking for a place to go to spread the word of the Bible, and Elizabeth asks him to consider Smoke Lake, to at the very least show their friends there they are thinking of them (listen, the religion in these books is a whole other kettle of fish I'm not touching, it's been talked about elsewhere).
In the end, headquarters doesn't send the couple back north but tells them to stay in Alberta, and they both focus on raising Henry to the best of their ability.
And this is where we leave them!
The following two books are about Henry and his sister, another child Elizabeth and Wynn adopt, but I think ending here on the high note of the Delaneys happily in a home of their own, able to communicate rather regularly with the rest of their family, and finally with a child they had both yearned for so much, is perfect.
This book is a lot of nothing until the fire, I will admit, but once the fire happens, boy, does it get going! And in a way it's sad that they never return back north which was where they were happiest, but they end up happy in Calgary as well, especially as Wynn is also recovering from a gunshot wound (the bullet only grazes him).
They return to their roots a little bit, with the teaching and the church community, etc., which is also a nice thing to see.
And really, these books are meant for relaxation, one of those things you pick up on a rainy day and breeze through. You can think about all that might be wrong, and all that sounds right, but it's never going to be a live-and-death situation, either.
I do recommend them if you want to see what inspired the hit show at Hallmark, so that you can choose for yourself what you think.
Meanwhile, I will see you all next week!
xx
*image not mine
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