The
Plot:
Bess Parker is only twenty-one years old when she
sets out by herself in 1908, leaving the safety of her childhood home for
southwestern North Dakota to establish a homestead. And it takes all the
strength she can muster to succeed—facing the perils of the vast prairie,
making her homestead productive, conquering the dangers of the frontier,
flirting with romance, struggling with the emotional needs of her heart and
body, and meeting the challenges of life on the prairie. But this unique young
woman has a steely determination, and her story is the epitome of courage and
grit in a difficult and sometimes cruel time in the history of the west.
About the Author:
Mr.
Jett is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and the Harvard Graduate
School of Business.
He
served in the United States Naval Nuclear Submarine Force where he created the
nuclear attack submarine (SSN) predeployment training program for covert
submarine operations, the tactical doctrine for the nuclear submarine
electronic surveillance system (AN/WLR-6), and is the creator of the geographic
plot (Geo Plot) for covert tracking of Soviet submarines from the SSN platform.
He
has had fifteen years’ experience in the management consulting and executive
recruiting world, where he participated in strategic planning, marketing, and
organizational development engagements, and CEO and Board of Directors’
searches.
He
has worked with corporate organizations in the area of critical skills
identification and skill profiling to assist them in their corporate development
programs as well as enabling them to target specific skill profiles for
recruitment for entry level management positions.
He
created the career management tool known as the “Doom Loop” which has become
popularized as a highly useful tool for anticipating and addressing various “career
crises” as well as enabling organizations and executive search professionals to
assess the skill capabilities, potentials, and current situations of
individuals in corporate environments.
He
is the author of several publications including the magazine articles “Whatever
Happened to Corporate Loyalty?” and “Critical Skills and the CEO”—both of which
were published by Chief Executive Magazine and have become widely popular
articles in the reprint world. He is also the author of two new books: Wanted: Critical Skills!! and Career Crises and the Doom Loop.
He
is an accomplished speaker on the subject of Critical Skills, having been
featured by many of the nation’s top business schools (Harvard, Stanford,
Wharton, Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan, etc.) and the American Psychological
Association. He focused on skill development at the high school level and was
featured in the US Department of Labor’s publication, “Teaching the SCANS
Competencies,” which was distributed nationwide. To facilitate high schools’
and training organizations’ ability to create and manage work-based learning
programs to teach critical skills and the SCANS competencies, he created the
software management tool known as “Coop2000®” and served as a national school-to-work
technical assistance provider as well as a national workforce investment act
technical assistance provider.
He
is the author of Super Nuke!, WANTED: Eight Critical Skills You Need To
Succeed, The Doom Loop, and Field Studies—all published by
OutskirtsPress.
Review:
Growing
up on a farm in Cando, North Dakota, Bess
Parker is a tomboy. She’d rather be outside helping her dad with farm chores
than inside learning to cook or sew with her mother. Obedient child that she
is, Bess manages to do both—get up early enough to feed the chickens, gather
the eggs, help Mama with breakfast, and then go outside to help saddle up her
horse and help her dad tend the sheep. In the spring she even helps with
lambing and shearing, while getting good grades in school and mastering the
piano, eventually being able to play complex pieces such as Chaupin’s etudes.
The only thing is, when a local boy expresses an interest in courting her, Bess
just isn’t interested. She wants to move farther west and homestead—on her own.
Much to her mother’s dismay, Bess never seems to show any interest in romance
at all.
She’s
very good at hiding the feelings she has for her best friend. Nor does she tell
her parents about Linda, the girl she meets on the train enroute to Haley,
North Dakota, the town where she plans to homestead, or the three wonderful
days they spend together before Linda leaves for Montana to visit her aunt and
uncle.
Bess grabbed me at the
beginning and held my attention straight through. I had difficulty putting it
down. Mr. Jett did a pretty good job of staying in the period with only one
anomaly that I found, which wasn’t bad for a first-time historical novel. Mr.
Jett’s dialog could also be a bit less stilted, but making the transition from
non-fiction business writing to fiction is not easy, and since Mr. Jett had the
same publisher, I suspect he had the same editor who may not know as much about
working with fiction. Bess is a plucky character—a strong woman who makes her
own way in a man’s world. A true pioneer in more than one sense of the word. I
highly recommend Bess.
Warnings: Lesbian
Relationships
Length: 301 Pages
Prices:
Paperback: $15.95
Digital: 2.99
Hardcover: $24.95
You’ll
notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors
usually receive 40-50% of the net proceeds 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-$2.99. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will
receive about $1.70-$2.10.
Download
the file from the publisher onto your computer as you would any other file. I’ve
created a folder for books on my computer, with subfolders by source (Marketing
for Romance Writers, Net Galley, Authors who find me on Kindle lists, etc.).
That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer.
Some publishers send books in all digital formats. If my Kindle breaks and my
kids buy me a Nook, I won’t have to replace all of my books. If you have a
Kindle and your hubby has a Nook, you won’t have to buy separate copies, so
buying directly from the publisher can save you money.
Moving
the file from your computer to your e-reader is as easy as transferring any
file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your e-reader
charging chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from
the folder into which you’ve downloaded the book to Documents/Books directory
on your e-reader. You can move the file by highlighting it and dragging it to
the documents directory in you Kindle you want to move it to. Or right click on
it, and then left click copy or move. Or hit Control/C for copy, Control/X for
cut, and Control/V for paste.
Your
author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.
Thanks
for visiting.
I
love sports—the NFL, the NBA… I hold season tickets to the Oklahoma City
Thunder. I love Broadway musicals, too. I have a BA in Management Information
Systems and a vocal minor. I love travel, reading, writing, and just to round
things out and scratch the singing itch—karaoke.
