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No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him.
Less than a month later, they are off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of a new marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As she and Luke make life together on the harsh and beautiful plains, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the girl he left behind and finds love where she least expects it. Dramatic and suspenseful, this is an unforgettable story of hardship, friendship and survival.
"One of the bright new voices in historical fiction...Dallas's authentic period details, her colorful minor characters, and most of all Mattie herself lend charm and emotnional truth to this appealing marital and pioneering adventure." ―Publishers Weekly
This information about The Diary of Mattie Spenser was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sandra Dallas is a New York Times bestselling author of nearly twenty adult novels, several children's novels, and numerous works of non-fiction about Western subjects. Her work has won numerous awards and prizes including the Colorado Book Award and, in 2021, she was inducted into the Colorado Authors' Hall of Fame. A former bureau chief for Business Week magazine, Sandra lives in Denver and Georgetown, Colorado with her husband.
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