Mercies in Disguise: a story of hope, a family's genetic destiny, and the science that rescued them The chapters alternate between characters, which gives the author plenty of scope to view the day-to-day chores from different perspectives, but it’s obvious the main character is Beulah, who has “the knowing”. She’s called dreamy and distractible by her mother, but strange and unnatural by the neighbour. Nettie Mae Webber's now a widow with a farm to run, animals to look after and her only help is her sixteen year old Clyde. Cora Bemis has to live with her guilt, shame and life on the prairie is very hard. Her four children Beulah, Benjamin, Charles and Miranda need her and they no longer have their father to do the heavy work. Soon it becomes very clear that Cora's going to struggle to survive the harsh winter on her own, she's not prepared at all, she has no money to buy supplies, she doesn't have enough fire wood and the only person she can ask for help is her neighbor Nettie Mae! In the Northern Wyoming prairie in the shadow of the Bighorn Mountains, the Bemis and Webber families are the only settlers for miles, with the nearest town 20 miles away. It is 1876 when Ernest Bemis comes across his wife, Cora, with the neighbor, Substance Webber. In a fit of rage, he shoots and kills Substance. Now with Substance in the grave and Ernest in jail, both wives are without husbands and left alone with the responsibility of the farms and their children. Life is harsh on the prairie, so with winter looming and the harvest not gathered, the loss of the men is devastating. Nettie Mae Webber is consumed with bitterness and hatred over Cora Bemis’s betrayal. At the same time, she feels relief at losing her brutal and uncaring husband. Cora is consumed with guilt and regret. It is 13-year-old Beulah Bemis and 16-year-old Clyde Webber, both resilient, likable characters, who try to carry the workload. They realize the real danger their families face with the coming winter. Nettie is hard to convince of the necessity of working together and moving the Bemis family into her house. When they join households, her animosity towards Cora creates conflict. She does everything to keep Clyde and Beulah separated, out of fear of a romance blooming. Wyoming, 1876. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn't think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

ANNNNDDDDD a major pet peeve- this author repeats half the story over and over and over again. I can't even with that. Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse. This isn’t a story about that murder, although it happens early on and is felt throughout the story. This is a story of how two families with all of the tension and emotion in the world goes on to make it through the long, cold winter without the men of their houses. This is a story about the forgiveness that comes-or doesn’t come-after such sin. Sixteen-year-old Clyde Webber takes on the burden of the heavy work at both homesteads, much to the angst and disagreement of his mother, because he can see how much the Bemis family needs him. And Beulah Bemis, just thirteen, takes to helping him. Beulah is much stronger and dependable than she appears. Death comes when it comes. You can’t do a thing to change it, once the great and final decision has been made.” This is definitely a story about survival, tolerance, unrecognized bias, forgiveness, and community. The setting on the prairie was really wonderful, and we got a lot of story elements around how these family survive without the men of the house who had previously done the bulk of the work. I loved how real and flawed the characters were. I also loved the main protagonist Beulah. She was self-assured, smart, steady, and a tiny bit magical.I LOVED THIS BOOK! Everybody, this is a must read!! Hawker is an incredible storyteller and in this entanglement of words have created this literary masterpiece. Nettie Mae Webber is now a widow with a farm and animals to look after with only her 16 year old son Clyde to help her. Cora Bemis has to live with her guilt and shame. Life on the prairie is hard and she only has herself to blame, her four children Beulah, Benjamin, Charles and Miranda need her. Soon it becomes very clear that Cora is going to struggle to survive the harsh winter on her own, she's isn't at all prepared, she has no money and the only person she can ask for help is her neighbor Nettie Mae! What’s good about the book? The writing is VERY good. This author has a talent with words that is unmatched in most other books I have read. If you love literary fiction, this book is lyrical and written with elegance. That’s where it ends for me. Literary fiction is supposed to provide in-depth characterizations too. The four main characters are unique and moderately interesting, yet they sometimes respond in unexpected (unbelievable) ways (Clyde and the coyote). The 16-year-old son of one and the 13-year-old daughter of the other join forces in an attempt to handle the farm work on each holding without the benefit of help from anyone else. The descriptions of nature are vivid, but the relationships between the characters are barely there. For example, we have no inkling of the connection between Ernest Bemis (the murderer) and his four children. He sends them hand-carved gifts for Christmas, but we aren’t privy to any thoughts they may have had about the gifts. There is no examination of their longing for his presence.(Aside: Would Ernest be permitted to whittle with a knife in prison?)

Clyde would have ridden up to the doctor’s house and said his neighbor had fallen from her horse and was unconscious. The author certainly convinces the reader of her expertise regarding the landscape and the era. You could easily imagine the farms, nearby mountains, the river, the sod houses, etc.. They begin to prepare for the long hard winter, harvesting vegetables, preserving food, cutting and seasoning fire wood. Despite combining the food/supplies they have, both women are concerned that cupboards will be empty before the end of winter and their children will go hungry. There are passages that blew me away with the depth and meanings they held. Passages that made me stop and ponder. This is one that is particularly profound: This is a dream Beulah is having about a worm eating the leaf of a beanstalk...."The worm moved its terrible jaws and spoke. God is said to be great, the worm told me, So great you cannot see Him. But God is small, with hands like threads, and they reach for you everywhere you go. The hands touch everything-even you, even me. What falls never falls; what grows has grown a thousand times, and will live a thousand times more. Wherever hand touches hand, the Oneness comes to stay. Once God has made a thing whole, it cannot be broken again."I’m sure there are other readers with more patience who will enjoy this. For me, the length, repetitiveness and ‘magic’ affected my rating. I thank NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. When a deep friendship develops between teenagers Clyde Weber and Beulah Bemis, the tension deepens between the families. Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home. From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

The story is about two women struggling to live and keep their children safe in a harsh environment of the Wyoming prairie, how they cope with being isolated from the outside world for months during the harsh winter, they discover by working together they can survive the long winter, they do manage to keep their children safe and they become friends. I didn't go into colonialism in this particular book because it's a story that's very self-contained an …more Such a great question. Thank you for asking it. Speaking of characters, these are written very well. In fact, this book relies heavy on the characters and their thoughts and conversations to convey the story rather than big action scenes. Certainly there are things that happen that raise the suspense, but this story is carried by its characterization. The other teenager in the story, Clyde, the dead man's son, doesn’t think about the incident much either. His father is blown away by a neighbor and yet his thoughts about the incident are never examined. He doesn't say or think anything like, “I never would have thought Dad could do something like this.” Or “Wow. What a way to go.” Clyde must bury his murdered father. Wouldn’t that incident be rough to process mentally? The moment is well-told and memorable, yet Clyde never thinks of it again. The story takes place in 1870 on a desolate Wyoming prairie, a good 20 miles from the nearest town. When Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, having sex with their only neighbor, Substance Webber, Ernest shoots and kills Substance. Ernest turns himself in and is sentenced to two years in prison. With winter approaching, Cora asks Substance’s widow, Nettie Mae, if the two families could share resources. Nettie Mae refuses at first, but when her only child, Clyde, is weakened by fever, she agrees to let Cora and her four (4) children move into her home. It is a long, hard winter for these two women to live under the same roof.Going in, I expected to find it hard to sympathize with Cora. Cora’s loneliness certainly led her to a decision that ultimately ruined the lives of many people. But I didn’t find Cora to be a bad person. In fact, I found the way she handled herself to be filled with a surprising amount of grace. I would like to have seen more about the before Cora. But the Cora we saw was someone who really just seemed to have lost their way. This book had beautiful prose. The descriptions of outdoors and nature, the sky, starlit or sunrise/sunset, used gorgeous words. Human nature was also succinctly described and showed a rare depth of understanding. Once I started reading I just kept going. It’s not an easy book to read by any means. The story is one of loneliness, heartbreak, love, redemption and finding solace where you really don’t expect it. A truly engrossing read. Rating: Hawker fleshed out the four main characters in unique fashion! Each section is broken into four chapters, beginning with 13-year-old Beulah's thoughts (told in 1st person). She is "eerie and wise", with the ability "to see and know". Her attunement with others and especially with nature gave me goosebumps! If anything, her character makes me appreciate the intricacies of life outdoors even more. The following three chapters, each told in 3rd person, incorporate Beulah's musings. We have: Cora (Beulah's mother) whose adulterous relationship sets the stage for this story; Nettie Mae (the neighbor woman) whose husband was killed by Cora's husband when he discovers their dalliance; and Clyde (Nettie Mae's 16-year-old son) who now is the "man of the family". Although I felt for each of these characters on various levels, it was Nettie Mae's perspective that I appreciated the most! Her mother Cora can't bear her new existence in the wilderness. Cora however has to turn to Nettie Mae Webber and ask for help if she and her children are to survive the harsh winter. Olivia Hawker takes a character that is flawed and 'weak' and asks her reader to empathise with her. At first I felt no sympathy for Cora but as the story progresses my feelings towards her softened.

Wyoming prairie in 1876, two isolated farming families live next door to each other and one night all hell breaks loose. When Ernest Bemis discovers his wife Cora and his neighbor Substance Webber cheating! The meek mild Ernest shoots Substance and kills him. He rides to the closest town, he informs the local sheriff about his crime and he's jailed for two years. The story (the plot and characters): The story starts with a structural mistake (IMO). It alternates through four POVs, one per chapter. There’s Beulah, a pubescent, carefree and wandering soul, daughter of Cora (the cheating wife); Cora, a timid weak woman; Nettie Mae, a stoic survivor of a somewhat abusive husband (the slain one); and Clyde, teenage son of Nettie Mae. IMO, this alternation in POVs every chapter creates a significant amount of repetition and drags the plot down with it. Mid-to-late book, I began to wonder: (1) if anything of interest was going to occur, and (2) if the story would ever end. I listened to the book. The narrator was great and helped to get the listener immersed into the story. Beulah has three younger siblings (Benjamin, Charles and Miranda) who may as well be cardboard cut-outs. Not one of them ever exhibits a “personality” of any kind. The two boys are referred to as the “little fellers” over and over so often, I started to cringe. Besides, “I’m hungry,” they haven’t anything to say. There’s a moment when the youngest child, Miranda, is in danger but it’s difficult to care since we don't know anything about her. She’s briefly described physically but never referred to again, except to say, “Thank you for the dolly,” to the widow, Nettie Mae. Clyde saves Miranda from a roaring river, but I think I would have been more moved if he had saved his horse. I felt I knew his horse far better than Miranda. Beulah’s siblings could have been completely erased without any change to the narrative. Why include characters that have nothing to add to the story? Olivia Hawker’s writing is beautifully descriptive of the land and its people. I love that the story was loosely inspired by her own family. I adored these two families and the strong women.The other teenager in the story, Clyde, the dead man's son, doesn’t think about the incident much either. His father is blown away by a neighbor and yet his thoughts Wyoming, 1876. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse. For both women living in the same house over winter is going to be a challenge and Nettie Mae has every right to hate Cora! Nettie Mae isn't as stern as she seems, she's a natural home maker and she loves children.