The Practice House
The dusty Great Plains of Kansas provides a stark backdrop to an unconventional love story set in the early 1930s. Aldine McKenna and her older sister are young, orphaned Scotswomen who had immigrated to New York. Aldine feels like a third wheel in her sister’s new marriage, so when an opportunity to become a schoolteacher in Kansas presents itself, she jumps at the chance, despite knowing nothing about Kansas, teaching, or the family who hired her. Once the naïve Aldine arrives, she encounters obstacle upon obstacle, including the potential of a forbidden love affair.
Aldine lives with the family who placed the ad in the New York papers. She catches the attention of the young teen boy who has fallen a bit in love with her, and she develops a special closeness with the younger child. Both the wife and the elder daughter are less welcoming and are suspicious of her motives; these characters serve to set up some of the conflicts throughout the book.
The Depression-era Kansas landscape is a harsh environment, and McNeal adroitly depicts the primitiveness of the surroundings, planting readers squarely in the middle of the Dust Bowl. Aldine’s charming lilt and her struggles to communicate are well-executed; readers can almost hear her Scottish accent leap off the pages. One can’t help but feel sympathetic toward her as she attempts to make sense of her new world. At times, the book moves a little slowly, then almost too quickly at the end. But ultimately, this is a mostly interesting story about an immigrant, family dynamics, and the varying definitions of love.
