A Historical Look at a Strong Woman

I was trying to figure out what to write about this since I felt strongly about it but couldn’t put it into words.  That sent me over to a site and I saw this word, epistolary.  I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up and that is exactly what this story is.  It’s an epistolary tale – aka a story told through letters.

We meet a woman early on and we find out that her husband is shipped off to war leaving her at home with their two children.  She purchases a farm and begins the life of a farmer while her husband fights in the war.  It wasn’t an easy task and the book is full of stories related to the struggles that she had not only as a farmer, but as a mother, and as a wife away from her lover.

I thought that Deakin did a good job of collecting the stories and putting them together into a format that makes sense.  Unfortunately, sometimes translating a letter directly into audio doesn’t always work as the tone and meaning behind the words can be misrepresented or the formatting of the letter would lead to a different understanding.  That’s not to say that the audiobook wasn’t good or that the narration by Lillian Rachel was bad – not at all.  It was more along the lines that sometimes I wished I’d been reading her letters instead of being read to (and others I was super glad that it was on audio).

Overall, I thought that this would be a good story to read in a women’s studies class or even a “what happened at home during the war” class. I learned a lot about life at home and even more about jobs and lifestyles of the women whose husbands went off to war.

Rating this one was really hard for me, and honestly, on the blog, I won’t give it any stars since I’m unsure what it really deserves.  On review sites, I will probably give it 4 stars (as it was about a 3.75 from me or so).




Book Description

Frances Donaldson: A Woman's War by Rose Deakin
Narrator: Lillian Rachel
Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
Series: Donaldson War Letters
Published by Self Published on May 24th 2019
Genres: History, Memoir




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