Thieving Forest by Martha Conway Guest Post & Review

Title: Thieving Forest

Author: Martha Conway
Genre: Historical Fiction/YA

Publisher: Noontime Books

Publication Date: August 7, 2014
Paperback: 416 pages

Synopsis:

On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead from Swamp Fever and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters, and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives.

The frontier wilderness that Susanna must cross in order to find her sisters is filled with dangers, but Susanna, armed with superstition and belief in her own good luck, sets out with a naive optimism. Over the next five months, Susanna tans hides in a Moravian missionary village; escapes down a river with a young native girl; discovers an eccentric white woman raising chickens in the middle of the Great Black Swamp; suffers from snakebite and near starvation; steals elk meat from wolves; and becomes a servant in a Native American village. The vast Great Black Swamp near Toledo, Ohio, which was once nearly the size of Connecticut, proves a formidable enemy. But help comes from unlikely characters, both Native American and white.

Both a quest tale and a tale of personal transformations, Thieving Forest follows five pioneer women and one man as they contend with starvation, slavery, betrayal, and love. It paints a startling new picture of life in frontier Ohio with its mix of European and Native American communities, along with compelling descriptions of their daily lives. Fast-paced, richly detailed, with a panoramic view of cultures and people, this is a story of a bygone era sure to enthrall and delight.

About the Author:

Martha Conway’s first novel 12 Bliss Street (St. Martin’s Minotaur) was nominated for an Edgar Award, and her short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, The Quarterly, Folio, Puerto del Sol, Carolina Quarterly, and other publications. She graduated from Vassar College and received her master’s degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She has reviewed fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Review of Books, and The Iowa Review. The recipient of a California Arts Council fellowship in Creative Writing, she has taught at UC Berkeley Extension and Stanford University’s Online Writers’ Studio.ethany Masone Harar graduated with a Bachelor's degree in English from James Madison University and a Masters in Secondary English Education from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Guest Post 

Big Families: What We Share and What We Borrow (or Steal)

I come from a big family — seven girls (yes, only girls) — but my father comes from an even bigger family — thirteen. There’s a story my dad tells about his younger brother, Jim. Whenever Jim went back to college after summer vacation, the older boys caught him before he left and opened his suitcase. One by one, each one of the brothers went through the suitcase to pull out their own personal items. By the last year it was a sort of game, with Jim trying to sneak out before the ritual suitcase opening and the other brothers stationed around the house as lookouts.

In a big family, you have to put down a stake every once in a while to mark your own territory. “This is mine,” was a common cry during my childhood. But I like to joke that my sisters and I didn’t just claim scarves or sweaters, we also claimed attributes. The “smart” one, or the “nice” one, or the “lazy” one (this last was usually applied by someone else).

Of course, claiming attributes can give rise to disputes as well, maybe even more disputes. One sister often declares that she is “just as smart” as the smart one. Another sister has now decided that she doesn’t want to be “the nice one.” Who can blame her? It sounds pretty generic.

When I set out to write a novel about sisters—only five, because I thought seven would be too many characters to keep track of— I definitely used my own experience as material. There’s the smart sister, there’s the nurturing sister, and there’s the superstitious sister (that’s me). There’s also the pretty sister, which to be honest I wanted to be me, too, but had to concede that it wasn’t. I pretty much stole my sisters’ personalities for the novel, and I was worried that when it was published I would get a good dose of heat from them.

I didn’t. They loved it. They each read my novel in record time and then called me to discuss which character was based on them, how they were like that character and how they weren’t, and how I got another sister “exactly right.” The funny thing is, I set the novel in 1806 (maybe thinking that would fool them?). But it didn’t matter, they still recognized themselves, and they recognized our family dynamic. Maybe sibling relations haven’t changed all that much in two hundred years. We borrow, we share, and when we can get away with it, we steal.

I’m glad I got away with it.

Author's Websites:                

Martha Conway’s website:

http://www.thievingforest.com/

My Review:
This was like "Little House on The Prairie" with all the deaths and challenges of pioneer life. Living off the land and trying to survive against the unknown. However this is a more accurate depiction. This story is not sugar coated for television. It was real and I felt for Susanna and her need to find her sisters. I really enjoyed the way that family was important to Susanna and how the author was able to have these 5 strong woman characters in one book. They faced so many dangers, and they also learned from the land. I am giving this book a 4/5. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own.