Hattie Ever After (Hattie Brooks #2)

Hattie Ever After by Kriby Larson is the long awaited follow up to her Hattie Big Sky novel about a young woman who attempted to be a homesteader in Montana in the early 1900s.

Now that Hattie Inez Brooks has failed to meet the criteria for keeping the homestead claim left to her by an uncle she never knew, she must decide where life will take her next. She grew up being passed from one relative to another and does not wish to go back Iowa. She has had some letter published in a paper back home and longs to be a real reporter like Nelly Bly.

When a vaudevillian troupe comes through town on their way to San Fransisco, Hattie joins them as a wardrobe girl - repairing costumes to pay her way West. San Fransisco in 1919 is a magical time and place in the history of the United States and Hattie will attempt to get a job a newspaper.

Larson is a through researcher and has captured life in 1919 California, after the big earthquake, when one of the great debates was whether women, who were shoved into the workforce during WWI, should work outside the home. Her stories are fascinating and Hattie is one of the most loveable historical characters ever created, sort of a young American version of a Maisie Dobbs - someone who was not satisfied to remain relegated to her proscribed societal role based solely on her gender.

Larson, Kirby. (2013). Hattie Ever After. New York: Delacourte Press.