The Song Of Sourwood Mountain By Ann H. Gabhart

the Song of Sourwood Mountain

by Ann H. Gabhart

Publisher: Revell

ISBN: 9780800741730

I'm such a huge fan of Ann H. Gabhart's writing. She gives the reader such a vivid sense of the hills of Kentucky in her stories. I couldn't wait to read her newest release, The Song of Sourwood Mountain. Revell sent me a copy for review.

Summary:

The doors she thought were closed forever are starting to open up . . . just a crack

Though the century began with such promise, it is 1910 when Mira Dean's hopes of being a wife and mother are dashed to pieces. Her fiancé dead from tuberculosis, Mira resigns herself to being a spinster schoolteacher--until Gordon Covington shows up.
 
No longer the boy she knew from school, Gordon is now a preacher who is full of surprises. First, he asks Mira to come to Sourwood in Eastern Kentucky to teach at his mission school. Second, he asks her to marry him. Just like that.
 
With much trepidation, Mira steps out in faith into a life she never imagined, in a place filled with its own special challenges, to serve a people who just might end up becoming the family she always yearned for.

My Review:

One of the many things I love about this author's stories is that they're about so much more than just the main characters. Usually it's just about as much of whole town or group of people included in the story. That definitely goes for The Song of Sourwood Mountain. On top of that, her stories always make me feel like I've just sat at the feet of a southern grandmama telling a tale.

The story started out so funny with Gordon asking Mira to marry him. Reading the exchange between the two was funny and sad. Poor Gordon, so awkward with his request and Mira dumbfounded by it just as much. But God...

As we know, we make our plans, but God knows our beginning through our end. Things won't always go as expected, which Mira (and in turn Gordon) found out. Talk about doors being closed when you think you're supposed to walk through them.

I was surprised at how little time the story covered because how well it was written, I felt like I'd really gotten to know Mira and Gordon. I absolutely adored getting to know Ada June, a girl without a mama or a family to call her own, but she has family in the way of Bo, her faithful companion. Do you ever get emotional with stories? I can tell you, I unexpectedly cried twice while I was reading!

The author is SO gifted in writing stories about the people in the hills (and hollers) of Kentucky. She sets a stage that gives me the sense of being there. And she seems to do it so effortlessly. The "ways" of the people come across exactly as I would've imagined them in this time period. It was incredibly believable. Life is hard, but their way of life is so well known to them. They have to rely on each other and that's evidenced throughout the story whether it's taking care of the preacher and his new wife, Ada June, or Elsinore.

I wish I could start the book all over again with new eyes because I loved the story so much I want to experience it a second time like it was the first. I have a feeling Mira and Ada June will stay on my mind and in my heart for a long while.

About the Author:

Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including In the Shadow of the River, When the Meadow Blooms, Along a Storied Trail, An Appalachian Summer, River to Redemption, These Healing Hills, and Angel Sister. She and her husband live on a farm a mile from where she was born in rural Kentucky. Ann enjoys discovering the everyday wonders of nature while hiking in her farm's fields and woods with her grandchildren and her dogs, Frankie and Marley. Learn more at AnnHGabhart.com.