Remember Me (Pictures of the Heart)
Addie Bryant is a “camera girl” at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909 Seattle, teaching girls to sell Kodak’s new Brownie by snapping souvenir photos for tourists. Having lived in Dawson City, she also speaks to school groups about climbing the hazardous Chilkoot Trail. The last thing she expects is to see her teenage love, Isaac, in the crowd. Even less does she expect her brothers, who sold her to a brothel owner, to have found her after her wily escape seven years earlier. Now Addie must overcome the shame of her past, her faltering faith, and the machinations of two evil men in order to reunite with Isaac.
I admit to being disappointed and less than engaged here. I found the writing and the characters simplistic. Many aspects seemed too far-fetched, and the religious fervour, while understandable in inspirational fiction, borders on preachy. In fact, the heavy religious bent did make me wonder, beyond the obvious, why Addie is content to live on the ill-gotten gains of a brothel and gaming house. However, I did enjoy the descriptions of the Exposition, the Chilkoot Trail, hitherto unknown to me, and life in the Yukon.
