Hello everyone!
I'll hopefully be able to get all four of the first books up sooner rather than later. I know there are six, there were two other books added to the series which cover a time I think twenty years after the originals are set, but I was never a big fan of those and prefer the main group which focuses on Elizabeth and Wynn.
After all, at its core and as an underlying message, these books are about a schoolteacher and a Mountie.
It's what made me fall in love with them in the first place!
I will say, though, that reading them again certainly does bring different things in perspective now that I'm a bit older ... and I wanted to smack the main character every once in a while.
Maybe I'm just too hasty though, you never know.
In any event, let's stop my babbling and have a look at exactly what I'm talking about.
When Comes the Spring is up next.
You'll find links to all the previous When Calls the Heart books and TV show mentions down at the bottom of the page, as always.
Onwards!
When Comes the Spring picks up almost immediately after When Calls the Heart leaves off, that is with the preparations for Elizabeth and Wynn's wedding. The plan is for the two of them to get married in September, but of course when you go and make plans, life is usually what happens.
The two of them had just decided to try and make things simpler since they don't want a big affair and just want their closest friends and family there when Wynn gets word of his new posting.
Now, the Mounties in these books (and potentially in those times) functioned a lot like the military in that when the posting came through, the Mountie had to go, no matter what else was happening at the time or what he was doing.
This means, however, that there's no chance of a September wedding because by September, Wynn has to be well and truly at home in the North.
Elizabeth graciously accepts this change and bumps the wedding up faster so they can leave together, but still have some sort of short honeymoon as they travel to Banff right afterwards.
And this is where their first disagreement happens.
See, Elizabeth wants to go hiking into the mountains, but the fashions of the time dictated that the skirts women wore were long, full, and usually had a bit of a train. This would be dangerous on the trails that she wants to attempt, so Wynn tells her the only way she'll do it is in pants, and it's almost the end of the world because pants are ugly and impractical and no woman alive would be seen wearing them.
COUGH.
Anyway, after some soul-searching and prayer, Elizabeth gives in since Wynn isn't going to budge from his position either (I love how people in the reviews and comments say he's being stubborn and yet he's just being realistic ... if she went up in that impractical skirt she may have fallen to her death!), and the two of them do in fact hike up into the mountains.
But all too soon it's time for them to pack up and leave as it will take them a few days to get to their new home, and Elizabeth says goodbye to everyone she's held dear. Who knows when she'll see them again, depending on their posting?
The North country, while wild and beautiful, also presents its challenges (namely mosquitoes and the like) and Elizabeth is definitely disappointed when they arrive to their new humble lodgings, though one wonders just what she was expecting either way, as I think Wynn DID tell her quite a bit about the North and how things are there.
Anyway.
Now in Beaver River, the pair of them set about making their new home a home and meeting the people who they will be living with for the foreseeable future, though Wynn is by far more successful than Elizabeth in this venture as she doesn't speak the Native American language and is very hopeful there might be a white woman in the settlement she could have tea with.
This, however, doesn't happen even though the trader's sister IS white, but his wife is Native, which initially disappoints Elizabeth until she gets to know Nimmie better, after which they become fast friends.
In fact, the book is basically Elizabeth adjusting to life in the North, far away from family and friends, and the mishaps she makes along the way, so it's mostly a transition rather than anything exciting happening.
Elizabeth does get a husky in this one though, whom she names Kip, and two big things happen in the settlement: one is a really bad winter snow storm that cuts them off from the world, and second is a big fire that takes out the trading post.
This forces the trader and Nimmie to travel out into 'civilization' so they can replenish their stocks and return in the spring with things the settlement dearly needs to survive.
We leave them all just as they're finally returning with the promise of a new and bountiful season, after a long, hard winter!
This book is definitely one of those transition books in which not much happens but you do get insight, or attempt to get insight, into the main characters, and I have to say Elizabeth doesn't compare favourably to the previous one, sadly.
She was fairly independent in When Calls the Heart, but that independence seems to shrivel to nothing as soon as she's surrounded by Native Americans and not 'whites', which seems to throw her for a loop for a time. I also don't really know what her fascination with drinking tea is, but there you go. She does eventually get the hang of things and makes friends, especially with Nimmie and the trader's sister, Katherine, but it's fairly painful to watch her mourn the absence of a 'white' woman all the while.
She somehow turns incredibly prissy in this one, which further backtracks an already slow book, because it almost beggars belief that she would have been so unprepared or so naive about life in the North!
We get a look at how these settlements used to live, or at least a representation of it if nothing else, though of course the point here is to make the 'white' man, the lawman, as someone who's bringing civilization into the Northern wilderness, which nowadays isn't exactly something one would boast about, but times were different then, I suppose.
All in all, this isn't the most exciting book you'll ever read, but it's certainly a worthy stepping-stone in the saga that we'll hopefully continue here next week!
*image not mine
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