Heroine: Solid

        Life in the newborn United States was not easy for anyone who was not a well-to-do white male, as is attested by the experiences of one white widow lost alone on the frontier with a head of cattle to drive to her new property, the well-educated runaway quadroon slave she falls in love with, and the various Native Americans and Mexicans who have the misfortune to cross paths with greedy and unprincipled white men intent on invading their land and grabbing it up for themselves.

What worked for me:

        The plot was the strongest feature of this novel, and the author's passion for his subject was highly evident throughout.  I hope he considers fleshing this story out and writing an extended, more visual version of it for his second edition, thus turning "Ten Thousand Acres" into the epic saga it cries out to be.

         Size-wise Flora was a very sturdy and capable woman who somehow managed to make a living with her own two hands in an incredibly inhospitable environment.

What didn't work for me:

         The modern sentiments thrust into historical sensibilities occasionally pulled me out of the story.  And the dialogue was also noticeably modern for the time period.  It would have added to the flavor of the story had the characters sounded more like the former colonists that they were.

          The bouncing around in the story's timeline left me confused at some points and uncertain whether the information presented was historically accurate or not.

Overall:

           Fans of frontier stories or multi-cultural novels may enjoy this one.