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

adventurous reflective sad

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

1.0

The writing was bland. No one came to life for me. Its gory and bleak descriptions of the Canadian frontier were depressing. This review from Goodreads really nailed it for me:

“The book starts off with a 16-year old Boston girl in the 1900's taking the train to the Canadian "Wild West" to live with her uncle. Kate gets to Canada and is told there aren't a lot of women up there because they are "too soft for this land". Kate meets Mike, a Canadian Mounty and falls in love in five seconds at most. They are married a week later and their honeymoon is a 700-mile trek across the frozen tundra that Mike worries will be too harsh for Kate because "This is no place for a women." 

She gets sick on the trek and Mike saves her. In the next chapter The wilderness is too much for her and she goes temporarily insane. Luckily, Mike is there to save her. 

A fire breaks out and Kate runs for the river along with all the other survivors. In the river she meets a mom with three young babies. Kate takes one. Finally! I think. Kate is growing a backbone! She will do something not-useless. Alas, the river and smoke are too much for her and Mike has to come save her AND the baby. 

Kate becomes pregnant and delivers a baby. The pain is too much for and she screams and drifts through consciousness. Mike steps in and saves her and the baby. 

It was at this point I threw the book across the room because, surely, women aren't too soft for childbirth. 

It's not just the sexism and the overall uselessness of Kate, it's the racism that made me sick to my stomach. When the book says things like "You have to tell them one thing at at time because they can only keep one thing in their head" and that an abused wife stayed with her husband because "that's the Indian way" it really made me ill. Maybe, as a women, I was just too soft for this book.”