A review by tessisreading2
Mrs. Mike by Benedict Freedman, Nancy Freedman

4.0

I really liked this, but I also feel kind of bad for liking this; while it presents itself as only semi-fictional, a kind of Laura Ingalls Wilder-type thing, it's actually mostly fictional, apparently (also like Laura Ingalls Wilder), and has a lot of the same issues - namely racism and a somewhat idealized portrayal of "frontier" life. Mrs. Mike tackles much more difficult things - domestic abuse, child death, etc. - but lacking even the fig leaf of "that's how they thought back then" (because it's fiction, so the authors were choosing to make these narrative decisions) it's hard to swallow that argument in any way. That said, the heartstrings are very effectively tugged.