Finding True Home
Series: Book 2 of American Dream series
Author: Heidi M. Thomas
Genre: Women’s Fiction
ISBN: 978-0999066317
https://amzn.to/2SY7nIR Kindle
https://amzn.to/2ATsvZQ paperback
Reviewed by Karen Casey-Fitzjerrel originally for Amazon
This book, based on life experiences of the author’s mother, is an emotional journey start to finish. Anna is a new bride of German descent in rural America a few years after World War II ends. She feels left out of the community lifeline where she and her husband have settled. At times she senses discrimination and believes she is the topic of gossip. The story opens as Anna finds out she is pregnant for a third time. The pregnancy is difficult with complications, including toxemia. To make matters worse, the child, a daughter, is plagued with colic, sleeplessness, and fits of screaming that last throughout her childhood.
In the rest of the story Anna slowly realizes her children have far different directions in mind for their lives than the one she has imagined. She struggles to understand why, in her view, her children have all gone wrong. A boy who leaves home as soon as he is of age, a first born daughter who goes away to college and has no plans to return to rural life, and lastly the youngest daughter who is willful beyond reason into adulthood.
For me, the book came full circle in the last pages but I don’t want to give a spoiler here.
This addition to Heidi M. Thomas’s body of work is sure to captivate readers as much as her previous books in which she offers readers rich and accurate accounts of obstacles young women faced eighty, ninety years ago. Young women who desperately want to step out of society’s restrictive molds. Thomas’s earlier books show us how Montana women, aspiring to participate in male dominated roles, faced their fears and naysayers with determination and courage. However, in Finding True Home, Thomas writes about a struggling mother and wife, new to mid-century America, who must examine her own thoughts in order to live in harmony with her family and community.
MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Karen Casey Fitzjerrell is the author of Forgiving Effie Beck, winner of the Will Rodgers Gold Medallion Award. It was named Kirkus Reviews Best Independently Published Novel of 2015.
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heidi M. Thomas grew up on a working ranch in eastern Montana, riding and gathering cattle for branding and shipping. Her parents taught her a love of books, and her grandmother rode bucking stock in rodeos. She followed her dream of writing with a journalism degree from the University of Montana. Heidi is the author of the award-winning “Cowgirl Dreams” novel series and Cowgirl Up: A History of Rodeo Women. Seeking the American Dream and Finding True Home are based on the author’s mother who emigrated from Germany after WWII. She is the author of
Cowgirl Up! A History of Rodeo Women (Winner Global e-book Awards)
1.Cowgirl Dreams (EPIC Award Winner)
2.Follow the Dream (WILLA Award Winner)
3.Dare to Dream (Finalist International Book Awards)
Learn more about her at
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