LAURA'S SHADOW (Doors to the Past #9) by Allison Pittman will be published August 1st 2022 by Barbour Fiction.
Ever since Laura Ingalls Wilder was briefly her teacher, Mariah Patterson has harbored a resentment towards the woman. That resentment has grown over the years—first because the man Mariah is in love with secretly pines for Laura, and then because of how Laura later portrays Mariah and her brother in her book These Happy Golden Years. Mariah did not have an easy life. She and her brother were orphaned at a young age, and they spent their teenage years trying to eke out a living on the South Dakota prairie. When her brother marries, Mariah is left feeling abandoned. Her loneliness drives her into making a mistake that affects the rest of her life.
Trixie McGowan is Mariah Patterson's great-granddaughter. She's always known about Mariah's hatred of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but she's never known the reason why. With Mariah dying, Trixie is summoned home from the big city to hear her great-grandmother's family secrets.
To be perfectly honest, the only reason I requested LAURA'S SHADOW from NetGalley was because the description mentioned Laura Ingalls Wilder and I wanted to see what that was about. Otherwise, I wouldn't go near anything that is categorized as Christian fiction. Those who do enjoy reading Christian fiction will probably be disappointed by the lack of religion. There were a few brief passages that took place at church and a couple discussions about religion, but that was about it.
Laura Ingalls only makes a physical appearance in the prologue. The rest of the time, she's just a shadow hanging over Mariah's life and Mariah places an insane amount of blame on the other woman. She thinks Laura was a horrible teacher. She's jealous of Laura because she had a better life than Mariah. And she absolutely hates the woman because Cap Garland has never gotten over his teenage crush on her.
Laura isn't the only real life person in the novel. Cap Garland was also a real person, and, while Pittman took liberties with his personality, she did stick to the facts when it came to his heroic act in helping save the town of De Smet one winter. She also portrayed his tragic death accurately. Mariah and Charles Patterson were also based on real people. (She calls them Marthe and Charles Harrison in her early writings.) It is believed that they were really Charles and May Elizabeth Rundle. Pittman took these two real people and made them completely her own.
I'm really not a fan of dual timelines/dual narratives. In LAURA'S SHADOW, every other chapter switches between Mariah and Trixie. Personally, I wasn't a fan of either main character. Mariah is extremely bitter, and I found Trixie to be annoying. I could have done with more story from Mariah and a whole lot less of Trixie. Overall, the novel was well written, but I felt there was a lack of depth. Facts were presented and statements were made, but there was absolutely no explanation or backstory. Had there been some more details, I think the novel would have been more enjoyable.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.