I’m reading Hattie Big Sky, by Kirby Larson, and am enjoying it so much that it’s keeping me up at night. Hattie is a sixteen-year-old pioneer, single-handedly proving up her dead uncle’s homesteading claim in Montana. If you’ve read this blog the past week or so, you know me well enough to understand how much this plot appeals to me.

But that’s not my point.

You know how you sometimes read something in a book and think, “Ah-ha! That’s exactly how I feel,” except you never thought to isolate or verbalize that feeling. It’s a thought that rings true for you and assures you the author knows what she’s talking about.

I found one of those on pages 120/121:

I guessed Charlie and I were in the same boat. We’d both signed on for something we’d envisioned as heroic and glamorous. The heroism and glamour might be there somewhere, but you had to dig and scrape and scrabble through the dirt, pain, and misery to find it. Assuming you could find it.

That’s children’s writing. That’s needlework design. And, yes, that’s wilderness living, too. It’s probably a lot of things. A good truth fits many situations.