elainemcooper
Lisa Lickel
Sunday Book Review: Winds Across the Prairie #4
Posted by Lisa Lickel on April 24, 2011
Caroline’s Choice by Martha Rogers
c. 2011
Realms Fiction
Book four in Winds Across the Prairie
ISBN: 9781616381936
$12.99
“Will Caroline finally find the adventure she longs for?”
Caroline and Matt were supposed to be married by now. Both of them know it, and so does everybody in their orbits. Eleven years is a long time to wait for a proposal; Caroline’s domineering mother, the mayor’s wife, makes sure her daughter doesn’t mark the passing days while training her to be the perfect dutiful society wife for the perfect man—who isn’t Matt, the well-to-do rancher.
Set during the days of Oklahoma settlement and statehood, 1907, Rogers’s fourth novel in her Winds Across the Prairie series is a well-documented and beautifully period-faithful story of independence.
Caroline can’t understand why the love of her life, Matt, is so reluctant to propose. Her parents sent her off to college after high school, unbeknownst to her then, to keep her away from the undesirable ranch family, to whom they’d already given their son in marriage to Matt’s sister. By the time Caroline is near twenty-seven, she takes matters into her own hands and asks her parents if she can move out on her own and get a job in a nearby city and live with friends. Caroline finds a suitable escort almost immediately in the politically-inclined Stuart who is on the hunt for a complementary wife. Meanwhile, back at home, Matt, who couldn’t stomach the thought of having an even closer relationship with the vitriolic mayor’s wife, tries to move on by dating a school teacher.
An accident reunites them and brings them to their senses and that long-awaited proposal.
I loved Martha’s first book of the series, way back when we were critique partners. In this story, the constant reminder that Matt and Caroline belong together gets tedious despite the wonderfully delightful portrayal of a society adapting to a new age and the descriptions of food and clothing. The underlying theme of finding out that independence often needs a lot of help from friends, including the very realistic story of reclaiming grace by one who had strayed so far from it, is a quality addition to the prairie set.
I received a copy of this book from Title Trakk for review.
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