Homestead by Melinda Moustakis

HOMESTEAD by Melinda Moustakis immediately pulls at the reader’s heartstrings and doesn’t let go as Moustakis relates the story of Marie and Lawrence and their efforts to create a home in Alaska. The debut novel is set in the mid-1950s and Lawrence is a Korean War vet with some unresolved PTSD issues. Marie, from Conroe, Texas, is an eighteen year-old running away from a poor family situation. After barely meeting, they decide to marry and the novel recounts their efforts to build a relationship and a family. Readers need to be patient. Each chapter represents a month or so as they attempt to erect a cabin, clear the land, and grow crops; this is rather slow reading at times, especially when these two young people seem to be talking past each other, wanting the same things, but unable to communicate their feelings and needs. Loneliness is pervasive. Still, readers will not be able to stop caring for them and the family members who do visit, Lawrence’s father, Joseph, and Marie’s sister Sheila with her husband, Sly. Moustakis’ writing about nature is poetic, too: “How sudden the autumn came, as the aspen and birch leaves flash bright and golden, a catch of the eye before the falling. But something to be said for the spruce trees, unchanged, steadfast in their evergreen.” HOMESTEAD received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly and here is the New York Times review.  If you are looking for a classic about married life and pioneering in the North (Alberta, Canada), I highly recommend a longtime personal favorite:  Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman which relates the story of Katherine Mary O’Fallon and Canadian Mountie Mike Flannigan.