Author: C.H. Armstrong
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Penner Publishing
Publish Date: January 19, 2016 (Today!)
Source: Author
What's the Story?:
From Goodreads.com: "The year is 1992 and Victoria Hastings Harrison Greene—reviled matriarch of a sprawling family—is dying.
After surviving the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Victoria refuses to leave this earth before revealing the secrets she’s carried for decades.
Once the child of a loving family during peaceful times, a shocking death shattered her life. Victoria came face to face with the harshness of the world. As the warm days of childhood receded to distant memory, Victoria learns to survive.
No matter what it takes.
To keep her family alive in an Oklahoma blighted by dust storms and poverty, Victoria makes choices—harsh ones, desperate ones. Ones that eventually made her into the woman her grandchildren fear and whisper about. Ones that kept them all alive. Hers is a tale of tragedy, love, murder, and above all, the conviction to never stop fighting."
My Two Cents:
"The Edge of Nowhere" is the story of Victoria, a woman who faced a lot of tragedy in her life, which has shaped her horrid personality that we see when we first meet her in this book. This is a look at her life in Oklahoma just before, during, and after the years of the Dust Bowl. This is a time period that I have not visited much in fiction, which initially drew me to reading this book. I was pulled in by the strong story and Victoria is just a fascinating character.
Tragedy and resilience are the themes of this book. Victoria is a fascinating character because at first she is incredibly resilient but life begins to wear on her. I liked how the author was able to show this progression. It's not pretty but it gives such good insight into who Victoria is and how she is equipped to deal with such things. We see how Victoria goes from suffering the tragic loss of both of her parents to getting married to a farmer, who she is convinced that she won't fall in love with but she does and she builds a life together with him with the children he had from his previous marriage and the children that they have together. Their life together is hard but good as they face the fall out of the Dust Bowl. Then tragedy strikes over and over again and Victoria must make many different decisions to try to keep her family's lives intact as much as she can.
The writing of the book is pretty good. There were a few issues with how the book begins and ends. The premise is that Victoria is looking back at her life and her family hates her. She's mean and she's trying to give her family insight into her life through telling these stories. We see how Victoria becomes less positive about her life throughout the book but I felt like we still saw a spark. By the time she is writing the letter, the spark is out but we don't see what finally put it out. The ending was also sort of abrupt and left me wanting a little more closure. That being said, the meat of the book was great and intense and kept me wanting to read!
Many thanks to you for taking the time to read and post a review. :)
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