Mrs. Mike

Serendipity.

I ran across a copy of Mrs. Mike at a library sale I browsed on my recent trip out west. I'd heard about Mrs. Mike years ago from a reader friend who was an enormous fan of the book, but I'd never run across the book. Until last week.

Mrs. Mike is based on the true story of a sixteen-year-old girl who travels to the Canadian wilderness for her health and meets a rugged Mountie and creates a life for herself there. And what a story it is. There's everything you would want in a story: cold, sickness, fires, trappers, friendship, and love.

I loved it. And it was the perfect read for a Wild West vacation.

I've had this book on my shelf for a solid four years and have just now gotten around to reading it! I really enjoyed it, all but the mostly brief and overly-vivid frontier violence (the two pages of an emergency amputation without painkillers is the one that really got to me). The MC, Katherine, is loosely based on a real woman who went to the north to regain her health at her uncle's home and ended up falling hard for the local Mountie. Only problem was how far into the frontier he actually belonged...at the literal edge of human settlement.

The descriptions of the life are quite excellent and vivid (except for the super gritty details of frontier violence, human and animal) and also each side character shines in vivid colors. Katherine remained my favorite throughout.

18+ for the violence and semi-frequent profanities and swears.

Thanks to netgalley for a free reading copy. A positive review was not required.