HATTIE BIG SKY
By Kirby Larson
Delacorte Press, 2006
Category: Middle-grade fiction
Good Lord, this book nearly killed me. As I read the final chapters to the kids last night, I was an absolute mess, box of tissues at my side, throat clenching, voice catching, tears streaming. The kids were stunned silent; I was too overwrought to bask in the momentary quiet.
Hattie Inez Brooks is sixteen and alone in the world. She is passed around from distant relation to distant relation until the day she receives a letter from an uncle she barely remembers:
“Being of sound mind, I do hereby leave to Hattie Inez Brooks my claim and the house and its contents, as well as one steadfast horse named Plug and a contemptible cow known as Violet.”
And so Hattie embarks on a new life on the Montana prairie, a life driven by the desire for a place of her own and by the challenge of proving up on her Uncle’s claim. In order to take legal ownership of his 320 acres, Hattie must cultivate at least one-eigth of it (forty acres) and set four hundred and eighty rods of fence (um, a lot). And she must do it in ten months.
Hattie’s story captured the admiration of my eight-year-old boys (they were behind her from the moment she got Uncle Chester’s letter) and the heart of their mother (I’m behind her even now). Hers is a hard journey … cruel and maddening and heartbreaking. And beautiful. Hattie Big Sky is one of those literary gals I will think about for a very long time.