Between Earth & Sky
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Years ago, Abby Reynolds was given the letters written by her great-great-grandmother who traveled from Virginia to New Mexico in a covered wagon just after the Civil War. Now, at a crossroads in her life, Abby reads Abigail's letters and follows her ancestor's trail westward where she seeks to understand the other woman's life in a land that was so foreign to her family, they all but forgot her.
Between Earth and Sky records two journeys—Abby's search of New Mexico where she meets an old Hispanic woman whom she shares a strange kinship with, and Abigail's travels through Indian territory into a life filled with danger, forbidden love, children she could not have imagined, and always the wide arc of the sky and the strange but magical earth that lies beneath it. Part epistolary, part narrative, Between Earth and Sky forms a love letter to the land itself and to those who chose to people it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a voice well matched to the simplicity of the book's epistolary format, Abigail Conklin, heading west in a wagon train with her husband and children, writes to her beloved sister Maggie, back home in post-Civil War Virginia. Chronicling a courageous life, the letters span six decades, from 1867 to 1930, when Abigail dies in New Mexico, her home for all those years and the scene of her hopes, challenges, disappointments and tragedies. Osborn (Patchwork) limns a harrowing picture of the dangers of the trek west, the primitive conditions and unremitting physical labor and the constant anxiety over daily dangers--from Indians, the weather and other natural phenomena. Over the years, Abigail almost loses her husband, has a (too convenient) brush with romance, suffers the death of two children and the emotional or physical estrangement of three others--all episodes related with a restraint that does not diminish their emotional impact. Abigail's solace is the desert landscape, which she grows to love and endeavors to sketch and paint. The heightened awareness of Abigail's painterly eye gives Osborn an opportunity luminously to describe the Southwest in all times of day and season. Nicely integrated into the narrative are historical milestones, details of 19th-century domesticity, social issues (the opposition of the Catholic Church to Protestant mission schools; the prejudice that makes Abigail a pariah when she chooses to raise her daughter's half-Mexican child). There is a certain formulaic inertia in Abigail's inability (with one exception) to leave the ranch and visit her family, and in her sister's reluctance to travel in turn. Yet Abigail is a well-developed character; strong-willed, stubborn and brave, she finds that``grief has grown next to contentment in my life.''
