Fierce Country by Heather Hansman

 

Once in a blue moon, a book captures what we love and consider most important in our lives.  Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America’s Love for the Wild by Heather Hansman is that book and much more. Fierce Country shares the adventures of three twentieth century women who shaped the recreation industry and ethical conservation through their time in the Grand Canyon, the Adirondacks, and in Colorado. Following their journeys and the obstacles they encountered would be enough to make a captivating historical rendering, but Hansman ups the ante by making the book strike the reader personally through her insights and piercing prose.

Like so many, I find peace, joy, and a sense of true groundedness in a place where I feel most at home and most myself. Until now, no single writer has ever so completely shared that spiritual connection to place that makes me feel most authentically myself. When writing of Anne LaBastille’s life alone in the Adirondack woods, Hansman invokes the work of Virginia Thomas, a solitude researcher, who notes: “Research has shown that we’re least likely to feel lonely, and more likely to feel spiritually connected, when we’re alone in nature, compared to being at home by ourselves or alone in a public place.” Hansman writes, “That connection was what compelled Anne the most. There’s a Welsh word, hiraeth, that loosely means a desire for a landscape that feels like it should be yours. One tradition calls it a longing to be where your spirit lives. Similar ideas show up in different cultures, too. Anne said that going to the cabin felt like going home.” 

Hansman explores our deep need for a relationship with wilderness and thus our desire to protect our environment through the lives and adventures of three very different women and the places they valued at a time when their being women made them outliers whose contributions were dismissed and denigrated. Hansman shares their weaknesses and their strengths. Georgie White was a mid-century daredevil who endangered the lives of many she guided through the rapids of the Grand Canyon. Dolores LaChapelle's championing of back country powder skiing in then remote and unknown Silverton, Colorado may have undermined her desire to support environmental philosophy. And Anne LaBastille’s fame interfered with the goals of her off-the-grid cabin in a remote area of the Adirondacks. Underpinning the three sections about each of these unique women is Hansman’s own journey to understanding Arne Ness and his development of deep ecology, the tenet “that humans are just one part of a wild, interconnected system and that any separation between humanity and the world around us is a false dualism.” 

Hansman shows us why the outdoors matters with crisp word pictures that immerse us in the backcountry places she visits as seen in this vignette describing a time she skied while researching Dolores’s work. “I ask the slope if it’s ready, like Dolores did. Then I tip over. The snow feels like smooth ball bearings, a texture that comes from the warm granularity of spring, frozen and rewarmed. The feel is familiar, but today the surface formed hollow and bright and something in the snow crystals sparkles like a dense carpet of sparks. I’m dropping through a meadow of sequins, every crystal catching the light. My turns swish with a metallic crispiness, and everything feels smooth.” 

Summing it Up: Read Fierce Country to gain an appreciation for why we love and value the natural world and to be a part of the sometimes dangerous and always exciting lives of three pioneering women who helped open the wild places of America. Savor Hansman’s word pictures that make you feel like you’re “dropping through a meadow of sequins, every crystal catching the light.” If you loved Pam Houston’s Deep Creek, this will resonate with you.

Note: Hansman will be a presenter at the Harbor Springs Festival of the Book this September. https://www.hsfotb.org/ Registration is waitlist only, but some sessions are free and open to the public. 

Rating: 5 Stars

Publication Date: July 14, 2026

Categories: Gourmet, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Soul Food, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Read an Excerpt: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/fierce-country-heather-hansman

Author Website: https://heatherhansman.com/about/ 

What Others Are Saying: 

BookPage: https://www.bookpage.com/reviews/fierce-country-heather-hansman-book-review/ 

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/9781335013439

"Three women who made significant contributions to the appreciation and protection of nature in the U.S. are explored with wit and verve in this fascinating mix of biography and memoir. ... With her clear-eyed view of her subjects and flinty prose, Hansman offers a new twist on American adventure and conservation. This shrewd and complex group portrait should not be missed." —Booklist (starred review)

Books I’ve Loved This Year—just in time for Mother’s Day

It’s been a busy winter and early spring so I’m playing catch up with this list of books I’ve enjoyed since December. If you’re looking for a Mother’s Day gift for the mother or grandmother you love or simply want something to satisfy your hunger for a good read, there should be something here for you. These titles aren’t just for women; good books are for everyone. 

A book I adored is How to Read a Book by Monica Wood. It’s the kind-hearted, caring novel everyone needs. The title is somewhat misleading as it isn’t a how-to book. Instead, it’s a delightful novel. Harriet, a widow, volunteers in a prison where she leads a book club. Violet, who’s in the book club, is in prison for killing a woman while driving under the influence. Frank’s wife is the woman Violet killed, and he’s lonely. After serving her sentence, Violet begins working and gains confidence despite her family shunning her. When Harriet, Violet, and Frank connect in a bookstore, our world enlarges. Humor, literature, and fine characters make what could have been sentimental drivel a stellar celebration of friendship, love, and community. It inspired me to reread Spoon River Anthology and consider my own epitaph. Harriet notes that “stories have a ‘meanwhile’—an important thing that’s happening while the rest of the story moves along.” This novel helps us see our own “meanwhile.”GPR, BC (2024)

Families, those we’re born into and those we find, offer a look at parental love. I particularly enjoyed these that were published this year unless otherwise noted:

Elizabeth Berg’s Life: A Love Story is a book I reviewed here in March. It shows how found families have much to offer .

Allegra Goodman’s This is Not About Us is told in interrelated short stories. The Rubinstein sisters and their families have gathered around their youngest sister Jeanne as she’s dying. Older sisters, Sylvia, 78, and Helen, 80, compete with each other by baking for the visiting relatives. After Jeanne’s death, Helen and Sylvia become estranged over an apple cake and their inability to forgive. The heartfelt stories of Sylvia’s son Richard, his divorce, his daughter’s bat mitzvah, both his daughters’ ballet lessons and performances, and his new romance made me yearn for a sequel with their quotidian lives taking center stage. GPR, BC

Bruce Holsinger’s  Culpability follows a family in a self-driving car. Seventeen-year-old Charlie is texting while “driving,” then his sister Alice screams and he grabs the wheel. Their car veers and kills the elderly couple in the next lane. Noah, Charlie’s dad sitting in the passenger seat working on his laptop, wasn’t watching. Genius mother Lorelei was working in the back seat next to Alice who was “talking” with her AI “friend.” Later on vacation, Charlie falls for the daughter of a billionaire and a new crisis arises. The peppering of excerpts from Lorelei’s monograph on the culpability of artificial minds highlights the moral quandaries the characters face. I was riveted by the characters as their lives exploded within me. This would make a great book discussion on the positives and negatives of artificial intelligence. It also offers fascinating thoughts on parental love and sibling rivalry. GPR/R/SN, BC (2025)

Tayari Jones’s Kin is a beautifully written tale of two women who grew up in a small Louisiana town in the 1950s and 60s. Vernice’s father killed her mother then himself when she was a baby. Annie’s young mother left her with her grandmother and ran off to Memphis. The girls, inseparable and as close as sisters, took different paths while continuing their strong relationship. Vernice worked hard in school with the help of her strong, supportive aunt, and she earned a spot at Spelman College where she was welcomed into elite society. Annie went to Memphis in search of her mother with a ragtag crew and led a tough life. It’s a beguiling tale of friendship’s power and the ending brings the meaning of kin home. I adored Vernice. The descriptions of her trials traveling in the Jim Crow South almost undid me. I worried over Annie like she was family. This one will captivate readers. GPR/GS/PP, BC 

Lily King’s Heart the Lover is a beautifully crafted novel that filled me with love and left me in tears during the last pages. While it’s related to King’s previous Writers & Lovers, it stands alone while being enhanced by the connection. Yash is ill and “Jordan,” a woman he loved in college leaves her own son, who’s awaiting a date for brain surgery, to travel to see Yash. The love Yash’s friends have for him is a gorgeous exploration of the power and joy of friendship. Jordan’s love of and connection with her family complicates and adds to the novel’s tenderness. The book renders deep friendship, parental love, grief, romantic love, and marriage in ways that will both bend and mend you. King’s melange of emotions and connections are a tribute to her immense skills and her compassion. G/GPR, BC (2025)

Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief was on the National Book Award short list and was the 2026 Carnegie Medal winner. In just 205 pages, this novel shows how fear, hunger, and death might lead anyone to become a thief when striving to guard loved ones. Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father finally receive their passports so they can escape the heat and scarcity of near-future Kolkata to join her husband in Michigan. Boomba, a thief who knows Ma has a secret, steals her purse containing the documents and their dreams collide. One paragraph encapsulated the book for me: “No, Boomba was no monster. All Boomba was, was a man whose moral compass pointed toward the north of his own family. Wasn’t that the most ordinary thing in the world?” Moral quandaries make this one for book clubs, but many will find it devastating and depressing despite the extraordinary writing. Have we all become guardians and thieves? G/M/T, BC (2025)

Catherine Newman’s Wreck wrecked me in the best way. I enjoyed Rocky and her family in Sandwich. I adored them in Wreck. Rocky is grieving her mother’s death and her widowed father has moved in as has her daughter Willa. When Rocky deals with a messy dermatology condition and a health scare, she’s at her humorous and poignant best, Newman blends gallows humor with compassion and uncanny wisdom. I didn’t think page-turners could be this profound. I hope to read the last  page of this book weekly to remind myself to live. GPR/S/SF, BC (2025)

Ron Rindo’s Life, and Death, and Giants, Rachel dies giving birth to Gabriel, an 18 pound baby.  Her 17-year-old son took her to Thomas, the veterinarian, when her labor was troubled, but he couldn’t save her. Rachel wouldn’t name either child’s father so she’d been excommunicated from her Amish community. Her mother Hannah, Thomas, Billy, the local bar owner who sponsors the T-ball team that Gabriel joins, and Trey, a disgraced former football coach who returns to town and sparks Gabriel’s football career, tell the story in strong alternating voices. Gabriel is raised by his strict Amish grandparents and as he continues to grow, he becomes a football phenomenon and eventually reaches almost nine feet in height. Gabriel loves and bonds with animals as he assists Thomas, but his superhuman athletic abilities create temptations on the football field and in professional wrestling for him and those who benefit from his abilities. The novel is a war between evil and goodness expressed through kindness as the mesmerizing characters struggle on what feels like an Old Testament battlefield. It’s spectacular. GPR/M, BC (2025)

Rainbow Rowell’s Cherry Baby is both a romance and a strong character-driven novel. Cherry, her mother, and her sisters are all plus-size women. Cherry recently separated from her husband whose popular comic strip is becoming a movie featuring her image. She begins dating Russ, the mayor’s chief of staff and everyone’s favorite guy who happens to be hot. The sex is steamy and the message of body positivity and self acceptance benefits from the heat. Rowell’s clever repartee makes the characters come alive even when life is hard. The “Gift of the Magi” twist on gluten-free Christmas food demonstrates Rowell’s subtle skills. The book is important in the way it conveys valuing self while being so entertaining the reader falls into the message seamlessly. “If you don’t believe that you deserve good things, how am I supposed to believe that I am a good thing?” I’ve met Rainbow and this book is a reflection of her kindness, brilliance, and humor. It might be as good as Eleanor and Park and that’s saying something. D/GPR, BC

Elizabeth Strout’s, The Things We Never Say comes out tomorrow Tuesday, May 5. Artie, a beloved high school teacher who loves his job, family, and community, is lonely and contemplates suicide, but when he nearly drowns accidentally while sailing, he chooses life. Soon after the accident, his 27-year-old son Rob tells Artie a difficult secret. He can’t decide whether to tell his wife what he knows. Strout ties Artie’s concerns to the current U.S. under Trump when Artie opines that the “country was committing suicide” and it echoes the novel’s title that we’re lonely because there are so many things we never say as we feel no one wants to know them. As always, Strout magnificently captures the inner lives of ordinary people. You can feel Artie and Rob’s love.. GPR, BC 

If your mother likes romance, these two are perfect gifts.

Kimbra Drake’s Where the Heart Meets the Sea embeds the reader on Lyngōr, a tiny, picturesque island off Norway’s coast. Ella plans to sell the seaside home she’s just inherited from her grandmother who raised her from infancy in Colorado after her mother died. She visits Norway for the first time and knows nothing about her mother or the cottage. When she meets Leif, a boat builder, sparks fly. People who might have known her mother shun Ella and incidents threaten her. Debut author Drake shows how Ella’s art makes the natural world real in a romance that beautifully reflects its setting and immerses the reader in it. D/R/SF

Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life, Alice and Hayden are competing to tell famed recluse Margaret Ives’s story. This one’s a touch steamier than Henry’s previous novels and that steam expresses how Hayden and Alice fall so deeply in love. The book also builds a nuanced look at the effects of trauma and childhood loss  on the characters and is a great, big, beautiful exploration of parental and romantic love. D/GPR/R (2025)

If your mother likes mysteries and thrillers, Nick Petrie’s The Dark Time, A Peter Ash Novel would be a wonderful gift. Death threats against Katelyn, an investigative journalist, and her 13-year-old daughter alert Peter Ash and his girlfriend June who find a conspiracy that threatens our entire civilization. Peter and June bring in Lewis, the threatening, tough, and capable genius. Petrie’s superb pacing, tension, complex characters, and attention to detail pull off another brilliant adventure. This one will make you think about the challenges of parenthood. Petrie’s characters always make me want to be a better person. CC/GPR

Even if Mom hasn’t read any of William Kent Krueger's previous Cork O’Connor mysteries, she’s sure to love Apostle’s Cove, the 21st in the series. Decades previously when Cork was the new Sheriff of Tamarack County, he was instrumental in the imprisonment of Axel Boshey, an Ojibwe man convicted of killing his white wife. Cork’s son, an attorney, is certain the conviction should be overturned, but Boshey who’d confessed won’t cooperate. Cork’s seven-year-old grandson is sure that the mythical Windigo has a part in the crime. This is one of Krueger’s best. GPR/SF/SN, BC (2025)

Nonfiction

Alice Hoffman editor, The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love. If your mother loves dogs, she needs this book. It elicits all the emotions loving a dog engenders. The lives of the fifteen dogs portrayed are funny, sad, messy, sweet, and outrageous—just like the dogs who fill our lives and tear them asunder. Essays  written by authors including Isabel Allende, Chris Bohjalian, Bonnie Garmus, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout, and Paul Yoon make their dogs come alive. Savor this one. Put it on your nightstand and read a chapter when you need it. It's a gem, a perfect gift for every dog lover. There is no one best dog in the world; there are as many as our hearts allow. GPR/SF

Roy, Arundhati, Mother Mary Comes to Me is the lyrical memoir of Roy’s life that formed the basis for her 1997 Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things. Mary Roy, known to her students at the school she ran in the hills of eastern India and to her own daughter as Mrs. Roy, inflicted emotional abuse on her daughter while also making her yearn to succeed. In a lesser writer’s hands, the abuse would have been impossible to read, but Roy’s masterful writing and her introspection make the memoir sing. I started reading it then switched to the audio so Roy could tell me her spectacular life story. I felt that she was standing beside me sharing her life. When Roy read the last words, I sobbed and felt her love for her mother despite her faults. If you give this one to your mother, let her know you don’t think she’s Mrs. Roy. G/R/SBP/SN, BC (2025)

Javier Zamora’s Solito: A Memoir celebrates the love immigrant families show by the sacrifices they make to give their children a better life. When Javier was one, his father moved to the U.S. Javier’s mother joined his father when Javier was five. He lived with his grandparents in El Salvador for four years and at age nine he’s traveling alone in a group of adults and children on the way north to the U. S. to live with his parents. Javier tells the story from his own perspective at age nine as he learns to tie his shoes and keep his fears in check. Some of his fellow travelers supply the love and kindness he needs and others don’t. Javier learns to live with all of them. He is an exceptional poet and only a poet could tell this story with the poignancy, truth, and spareness it deserves. I intended to read this when it came out. I’m glad I didn’t because it means more to read it in the current political climate. Yes, it’s emotionally tough, but Javier Zamora makes it beautiful. He also reads the audio version with tender care. Your mother will love it as will you. G/R/SN (2022)

The World at Home by Ginny Kubitz Moyer, a fine December read

 

The World at Home by Ginny Kubitz Moyer isn’t set entirely in December, but its introduction of the first performance of The Nutcracker in the United States in San Francisco on Christmas Eve in 1944 is one of the reasons historical fiction devotees will want to read the novel this month. It’s a novel that captures the burgeoning city of San Francisco during wartime with its diversity and the influx of soldiers and sailors ready to embark into the war in the Pacific. The story focuses on twenty-year-old Irene Cleary, an orphaned seamstress, who has recently inherited her shop and the apartment above it from the Russian seamstress who mentored her. Irene grew up in a local Catholic orphanage where she was dropped off shortly after her birth. She met her best friend, Trixie, when they were eight and Trixie and her brothers came to the orphanage while their mother was in a tuberculosis sanatorium and unable to care for them. When Trixie’s mother was well and the children went home, their family included her in all holidays and family gatherings allowing Irene to feel their nurture and love.

The book opens when Irene receives an invitation to the home of Cynthia Burke, a wealthy Nob Hill newlywed, who wants a dress remade. When Mrs. Burke’s husband Max, an owner of Chicago nightclubs, sees Irene’s design skills, he asks her to help him design his new San Francisco nightclub. Irene also volunteers at the USO where she falls in love with a sailor just before he leaves to serve. Irene busies herself with her clients and also helps with a new San Francisco Ballet production after learning that her mentor volunteered sewing costumes for the ballet The ballet company is hurriedly preparing for the first performance of The Nutcracker while rationing makes costume creation exceedingly difficult. When a theatre closes, the ballet acquires its red velvet curtains which Irene and others are able to use thus allowing them to complete the costumes.

Irene has many obstacles and complications in her young life, but she’s such a real, caring, and complex character that this reader constantly cheered her on while peering at her on the page. I was so caught up in her life that I read the entire novel in less than a day. The World at Home offers romance, historical detail, and enough moral quandaries to make the reader flip the pages to keep up with an ever-changing world.

I’ve often believed that what we love as a child will make us happy as an adult. This is shown in the novel when Irene shares that her love of clothes began the Christmas when she was nine and she received a book of paper dolls. “It was a family: Mother, with marcelled hair and profuse eyelashes; Father, a pipe forever stuck in his mouth: dark-haired Jimmy, blonde Jane, and Baby, a child of indeterminate gender with a large amber curl on his or her forehead.” Irene was fascinated with the mother and after living her entire life surrounded by nuns in black robes, she was enamored with the mother’s colorful outfits. Irene played with and dressed the dolls endlessly and began sketching new clothes for the them which opened an entire new world to her. She later realized that she was happiest and most fulfilled when she was sewing or creating clothing designs which meant that her profession, her volunteer work for the ballet, and her ideas for the night club buoyed her during tough times. 

Summing it Up: Read The World at Home to see what San Francisco was like in 1944 and to enter the life of a delightful, caring, talented young woman on the brink of adult life. Savor the insights into her growth, her loves, and the way her life mirrors the changing city. The World at Home made me want to purchase a plane ticket to see the streets she made come alive. 

Rating: 5 Stars

Publication Date: December 9, 2025

Categories: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Pigeion Pie, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Author Website: https://ginnymoyer.org/the-world-at-home/

Interview with the Author: https://thenerddaily.com/ginny-kubitz-moyer-the-world-at-home-interview/

What Others Are Saying: 

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-world-at-home-by-ginny-kubitz-moyer

Kirkus Reviews:  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ginny-kubitz-moyer/the-world-at-home/

“Beautifully crafted, poignant, and engaging. . . . There is  an innocence to this novel that will at once shatter your heart and give wings to hope. Oh, to be 20 again. I loved this book.” Ashley E. Sweeney, author of The Irish Girl

Kate & Frida by Kim Fay

 

Twenty-something Frida Rodriguez yearns to be a war correspondent and travels to Paris in 1991. She can’t find some of the books she wants to read there, so she writes to a Seattle bookstore requesting them.  Bookseller Kate Fair, an aspiring writer, mails Frida books and they begin corresponding. Both young women share their dreams and fears with each other as they nudge, cajole, and support one another in the coming three years. This wise epistolary novel celebrates food, friendship, and books while it acknowledges grief and suffering. 

As Kate deals with falling in love with a pessimistic fellow bookseller and writer and the health problems of her beloved grandfather, Frida’s prompts and encouragement buoy her. The books about war correspondents like Martha Gellhorn that Kate sends Frida encourage Frida to travel to Sarajevo where the war almost breaks her. 

“The fire sounded like wax paper crackling in my ears, and there were cracks like a whip. I thought it was the flames, but it was gunshots. Kate, the snipers were shooting at human beings trying to save books. I was a human being trying to save books.”

When Frida returns to Paris, she welcomes Lejla, a Bosnian Muslim woman, and Branka, a young child, from Sarajevo. Frida researches and cooks comforting foods from their homeland and begins “The Ramona Club” when they and another displaced woman stay after dinner to listen as Frida reads from the Ramona Quimby books Kate sends them. Kate and Frida help each other find their strengths. 

“The other night the universe burst into our correspondence to make a point. Lejla showed up with flowered curtains from the flea market, and I told her how her gifts make my room feel like a sanctuary, but I feel guilty enjoying it when there are children in her country who can’t even play outside without the risk of being shot. 

Get this. She got mad at me. She says that kind of thinking is self-indulgent. We owe it to people who are suffering to savor everything good and beautiful we have in our lives. Not that we should deny bad things or turn our backs on them. But if suffering is contagious then why isn’t joy? Which virus do we want to spread? We don’t help someone who’s miserable by being miserable - we only add to the world’s misery. Lejla knows her best friend’s life is in genuine danger every single second, and she does one beautiful thing for someone every day to show the bad guys they’re not winning. She lets herself feel joy so she can share joy. After all, you can’t share something you don’t have!” 

Summing it up: During this time when many feel miserable about the state of the world, this enthusiastic epistle reminds us of the power of friendship and joy. This offering by the author of the delightful Love & Saffron is just what readers need. The welcoming language enveloped me and made me feel as if I were friends with Kate and Frida as I shared their heartaches and triumphs. If you loved the classic 84, Charing Cross Road (and who didn’t), I think you’ll find similarities in this celebration of books, bookstores, food, and friendship.

Rating: Five Stars

Publication Date: March 11, 2025

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Super Nutrition, Book Club. 

Author Website: https://www.kimfaybooks.com/ 

Read an Excerpt: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/762939/kate-and-frida-by-kim-fay/  

What Others Are Saying: 

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kim-fay/kate-frida/ 

Parnassus Books: https://parnassusbooks.net/book/9780593852385 

USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/booklist/booklist 

“Kim Fay’s second delightful epistolary novel after “Love & Saffron” pairs effervescent 20-something pen pals, Kate and Frida, whose letters travel from Seattle to Paris and beyond. Along with the desire to become writers, they share a passion for books and food. Their embrace of joy, especially in dark times, sends a message of hope.”   — The Christian Science Monitor