Hattie Ever After
Hattie Brooks, the intrepid heroine of the Newbery-honor winning Hattie Big Sky, has returned – in a sequel with a strikingly different setting, but no less appeal. Hattie has traded the prairie sky of Montana for the bustling streets of San Francisco, determined to find a job as a big-city reporter. But in 1919, reporting is a man’s game, and it takes more than hopes and talent for a teenage girl to succeed in the press. As Hattie negotiates the excitements and dangers of San Francisco with her nose to the beat, she learns secrets that threaten to unravel her trust in her closest friends and family. At times it seems her only true-blue supporter is Charlie, her faithful high school sweetheart. But how can she accept his proposals to settle down when it means abandoning the professional life she has dreamed of?
Hattie Ever After conveys all the energy and excitement of San Francisco on the cusp of the Roaring Twenties, weaving in fascinating historical details from the workings of the San Francisco Chronicle, the emerging aviation industry, and the rise of the Golden Age of the Con. President Wilson’s visit to the city to promote the League of Nations – an event seldom covered in any historical fiction – makes a wonderful set piece. More impressive still, Kirby Larson ignores the common injunction to “never write about writing” and blends clips from Hattie’s burgeoning journalism career seamlessly into the narrative. Larson’s enthusiasm for thorough and accurate research is contagious; as Hattie searches tirelessly through the newspaper “morgue” in search of clues to the past, the reader can imagine the author doing just the same herself, triumphantly fitting together the pieces of this thoroughly engaging book.
