Walls for the Wind by Alethea Williams

Blurb:

Can an angel survive Hell on Wheels? Kit Calhoun leaves New York City with a train car full of foundlings from the Immigrant Children’s Home. Her assignment is to sever ties, so she has no idea of the tangled threads of connection that await her in Dakota Territory. First is what to do with the leftover children who simply refuse placement. Second is handsome Patrick Kelley, continually managing to distract Kit from her task. Third is the demented gambler who fastens deadly attention on Kit and keeps turning up everywhere from Julesburg to Cheyenne.

Forced to leave behind everything familiar, is it possible for a company of New York City castoffs to learn to fight for their hopes in the raw new American West?

Review:

I enjoyed Walls for the Wind. I knew that women traveled west in search of husbands, but I had no idea good Christian organizations sent orphans west to basically work as indentured servants on farms or in towns in hopes they would bond with the families who, for all intents and purposes bought them, selecting them off auction blocks as though they were slaves just arrived from Africa. I suppose most of the children did become members of the families who took them in, but as the story shows, not all did. And while the contract stated both parties had the right to terminate it within sixty days (I believe), the agents shepherding the children rarely told them they had any choice but to stay where they were.

When Kit Calhoun of the Immigrant Children’s Home bonds with four of her charges (against the rules), she refuses to break up a set of siblings and allows two older children the right of refusal if they don’t like the looks of the people offering to take them. Thus she finds herself at the end of the line when she receives word her mentor and foster-father has died. The agent traveling with her gives her an inheritance her foster father supposedly left for her “just in case,” and she resigns her position, adopts her charges, and forges on, following the railroad crew building the new Union Pacific Railroad. In Julesberg in the Colorado Territory, she meets Patrick Kelley, the agent for the Company store, and becomes the target of a psychopathic gambler bent upon revenge, thinking Kelley killed his twin. And when Kit again follows the railroad, this time to Cheyenn in the Dakota Territory, both men turn up there, too.

This would have been a great book if it weren’t for the head-hopping. This is the second book in a row I’ve read from the same publisher that was rife with this problem, and it’s a shame their authors have to suffer from such inadequate editing.

If you can read a book that hops from one point of view to the next without getting dizzy, Walls for the Wind is an interesting look at our history and a good adventure.

Length:  221 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $17.95

Digital:  $3.99

Buy Link:  http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=55&products_id=1207

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

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Thanks for visiting. Rose, Julie & Rochelle