REVIEW: Across the Crying Sands by Jane Kirkpatrick

JayneBook Reviews / C+ Reviews1890s / American historical / Historical fiction / inspirational / motherhood / OregonNo Comments

A Tale of Uncharted Adventure and Discovery Inspired by a True Story

In 1888 Mary Edwards Gerritse is a witty and confident young woman who spends as much time as possible outdoors on the rugged Oregon coast where she and her husband, John, have settled. The two are a formidable pair who are working hard to prove their homesteading claim and build a family. But as Mary faces struggles of young motherhood and questions about her family of origin, she realizes that life is far from the adventure she imagined it would be.

After losing the baby she’s carrying, grief threatens Mary, but she finds an unconventional way to bring joy back into her life–by taking over a treacherous postal route. As Mary becomes the first female mail carrier to traverse the cliff-hugging mountain trails and remote Crying Sands Beach, with its changing tides and sudden squalls, she recaptures the spark she lost and discovers that a life without risk is no life at all.

CW/TW – miscarriage, animal in danger

Dear Ms. Kirkpatrick,

I loved the idea of this book more than I ended up liking it as a whole. Looking for something different, I hoped to see more of Mary as a mail deliverer but like a lot in the story, little of this is actually seen. What I did enjoy is the fact that a woman’s discontent with a traditional role in life is shown in a historical setting as well as a bit of her standing up for her right to do something she finds fulfilling.

Mary is young (sixteen) when she marries Dutch (former) sailor John who is twenty four. They have plans to “prove” a homestead near Mary’s parents on the Oregon coast but life has other plans for them.

Mary is a vibrant woman who initially radiates joy off the page. In a “start as you mean to go” moment, she tells John that she wants to be involved in the family decision making, something that takes him aback a bit. It’s just the start of them learning and working at their marriage. The book mainly focuses on Mary but from little bits of John’s POV, it’s clear that this concept is totally new to him. He balks a bit and has some stubborn pride about asking for help but he does listen to Mary even if at times his choice to take jobs for money causes friction between them.

There is lots of detail about living in a developing part of the country. Several people have big development plans for the area which is contrasted to the traditional way of life of the Clatsop people. One of Mary’s dear friends is a Native woman who drifts in and out of the story and ends the book as a mystery which I guess is to be solved in book two.

Another thread involves something in Mary’s family past which is hinted at before a few bits of information are dropped only for the whole thing to fade into the background. Another plot thread left unfinished involves an English “remittance man,” his hotel plans, and the life he left in the UK. More for book two, I guess, but I dislike that all of these are left with no resolution.

So most of the book is about Mary, her getting used to the back and forth of marriage and motherhood before she sticks to her guns and gets more of the life she not only wants but needs. Mary does love her husband – mostly, unless he’s leaving her to handle a farm and four children under the age of seven while he’s off for months at a job. She also loves her children but yay that the tiring reality that busy mothers face in trying to juggle all of this is allowed to be seen. Mary also seems to be dealing with a bit of postpartum feelings along with the exhaustion. I honestly can’t remember the last historical era book I read with that.

But something about the way the book is written kept it a little bit at a distance for me. Several of the characters are rather flat and fade in and out of the narrative. The inspirational aspects are fairly light until Mary’s miscarriage when suddenly a new character appears who gives her a heavy dose of religion, some of which didn’t sit well with me.

I like the frontier aspect of the story and that Mary is a strong person who ends up demanding what she wants from life, which is to be more than a wife and mother. Sometimes the pace is fairly slow but then life in the 1890s was slow. The unfinished stuff and sudden glopping of religion didn’t work for me, though. C

~Jayne

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