Tom-boy Jane Peck thinks she’s living the good life. She has the most wonderful papa in the world and their housekeeper makes the best cherry pie. Jane spends her days helping her father (who is a doctor) with his job and running around with the local boys, making havoc whenever she can. She loves holding the needle and thread when her father must stitch up a man’s cut and messing around on rooftops with Jebediah, one of her favorite playmates. Jane even calls herself “the luckiest girl”.
Jane has never wondered why the other girls in the neighborhood didn’t play with her, and she has never once worried about her waistline growing too much after cherry pie. She has never felt concerned about her unruly hair or her barefeet. And when miss “perfect” Sally Biddle bullied her, Jane considers her mean and stuck-up.
Things change, however, when William Baldt arrives to be an apprentice for her father. Jane deems him as perfect in every way. Anything William says she would believe. William comments that she is unruly and improper, and Jane skipps off to finishing school. William says that she looks lovely in the color green, and Jane wears it whenever possible.
When William leaves to go stake a claim in the wilderness, he writes to Jane and invites her to join him. She accepts and gets in a boat as soon as she can. When she finally arrives, however, she discovers that William has traveled far away to go take care of business. Jane is left to fend for herself in the middle of dirty mountain men with no cabin to call her own.
Boston Jane: an Adventure is the first in the Boston Jane Trilogy. An amazing book about betrayal and working around it, finding new love and surviving in the wilderness.
Have you read The Moving Picture Girls?
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven't. Is it something you would recommend?
DeleteYes. (I enjoyed it.
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