Set in small-town Minerva, Minnesota, in 1923, this novel is a paean to the bond between mothers and daughters, actual and otherwise. Fifteen-year-old Penny Niebeck, angry over her mother Barbara's affair with the man for whom she keeps house, takes off to become a hired girl herself for Cora Viney, who dresses in men's clothing and works her grandfather's farm alone while awaiting the birth of her child. Penny proves a lifesaver for Cora and newborn Phoebe, and her life is soon entwined with theirs until tragedy strikes at the farm and the Hamilton house. Both mothers have risen above being victimized by the men closest to them, Barbara raped by her father, who tried to drown newborn Penny, and Cora physically abused by her husband, a prominent doctor. Penny, the link between the two women, becomes both surrogate mother and daughter and is the key cause of the seemingly inevitable violent event that will shape her life. Having woven fairytales into Summit Avenue (2000), Sharratt now threads The Odyssey through this engrossing tale. --Michele Leber Copyright 2004 Booklist

Second-novelist Sharratt (Summit Avenue, 2000) celebrates female grit as her three spirited protagonists challenge with courage--and a little firepower--the men and the society that wronged them. The setting is 1920s Minnesota, where the characters are as shadeless as the prairies that stretch to the horizon beyond the small town of Minerva. Thirty-year-old Barbara Niebeck keeps house for the Hammond family, and she's taken her 15-year-old daughter Penny out of school to help with the work. Bright and ambitious Penny resents being deprived of an education almost as much as she does her mother's affair with Mr. Hammond, whose wife has been in a coma for four years. (Barbara has never told Penny that her grandfather is also her dad and tried to drown her at birth, so she doesn't understand what her mother is up against.) When Barbara slaps Penny for criticizing her behavior, the girl runs away. Seeing an advertisement for a hired hand, Penny heads out to the Maagdenburgh farm to find the owner hemorrhaging badly after childbirth. She calls a doctor, cleans up the baby, and soon learns that Cora, a former socialite who dresses up as a man, has fled an abusive marriage and is terrified that husband Adam will come for her. Inspired by her new employer, Penny studies to become a nurse, cares for baby Phoebe, helps around the house, and learns to handle a gun. When Adam shows up, she acts to protect Cora, who then decides to flee to Mexico. Barbara is also in trouble, wounded by Hammond's deranged daughter Irene, who also shoots her father. But this is a story about survival, so the three women must be tough and resilient enough to move on. Shucking off their notoriety, they head for new destinations where more manageable challenges await them. Sort of tough women doing really tough stuff in a marshmallow sort of a story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This story of three women a mother, her daughter and the town pariah living in a Minnesota hamlet in 1923 is a heartfelt tale of female empowerment, hampered slightly by unnecessary exposition and a sometimes predictable plot. Fifteen-year-old Penny Niebeck is a curious, gentle girl living and working with her beautiful mother, Barbara, a cleaning woman for the privileged Hamilton family. Hardened by incest (of which Penny was the result), Barbara loves her daughter but is suspicious and cynical about human nature. She's also having an affair with Laurence Hamilton, a relationship that disgusts Penny. Meanwhile, Penny finds "the Maagdenbergh woman," whose real name is Cora Egan, fascinating. A moneyed socialite rumored to have fled Chicago and an abusive husband, Cora dresses like a man and runs her family farm on her own but she's pregnant and could use a hired hand. Following a quarrel with her mother, Penny runs to Cora's, arriving just in time to help her give birth to a baby girl. It's the beginning of a beautiful but deeply complicated friendship, as the women's relationships with their men take tragic turns. While Sharratt's (Summit Avenue) male characters are often leering and dangerous, her female characters emerge as convincingly ambivalent, yearning and sympathetic, and their emotionally satisfying, old-fashioned happy ending should be a crowd pleaser. Agent, Wendy Sherman. Author tour. (Sept. 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved