Reader’s comments on MAMA GRACE

Your comments are most welcome – email cdbagshaw@btinternet.com

Some books feel like “stories” where you get to know the characters. This book is so “real life” and the author’s crafting of it so superb, that as I read it, the characters became real people to me -- coming into focus more clearly, as the drama became more intense. I was sad when it finished – I kept wanting to travel with them all. Now I keep finding myself wanting / waiting to read the author’s next book, and I rarely feel that.

Rebecca Duncan

Rogue River, Oregon

To my delight I found the story to be superbly written, easily as good or better in plot, character development and writing style than the two Willa Cather books ("O' Pioneer" and "My Antonia") I have read.

Tom Pryor, attorney

Fort Smith, Arkansas

“This novel is fascinating on many levels. Not only is the character of this feisty, strong woman well brought out by her great granddaughter Dana Bagshaw, but her children each have different and very endearing characteristics. Several minor characters such as the Comforts, Doctor McGinnis and Grandpa Yourt are well-drawn and deeply interesting. This is a thoughtful, different, well-written and special book.

I want to sit down and read it all again.”

J. Bicker

Leicester Writer’s Workshop, U.K.

A Novel with Great Laughs and Deep Sorrow

As a 19th century woman, her five children, and a mostly absent husband struggle to scratch out an existence on the windswept plains of Oklahoma, every manner of hardship tests their will to find happiness. The book often made me laugh out loud, and softly sob more often than I would admit. "Mama Grace" is filled with many great stories, the kind passed down from generation to generation. The most poignant of which were surviving too much, then too little water, mama chopping railroad ties to free a wagon wheel, saved from a wildfire by an Indian and the "Pride of Kansas" showing from beneath a singed dress, selling milk at $.01 per quart, a chaw does in a threatening rattlesnake, a youngster lends nature a helping arm during the birth of piglets, and it's deeply moving depiction of the age old struggle between the sexes. Written with perhaps a bit too much drifting dialog at times, and with a heart wrenching ending, "Mama Grace" is a good story told well. We see life may not have a happy ending, but the journey is certainly worth the effort.

Ralph Jones, Hassensack, N.J.

“Once I started Bagshaw's fascinating book, I found it gripped me such that I wanted to read on through to the end.  The strong characterisations of both people and places have given me a vivid insight into pioneering days.  What a finely drawn portrait we now have of Mama Grace, and what a strongly determined character she obviously was.  I now await Bagshaw's next novel, when we shall have a chance to hear the other side of the story from her son Victor.”

Kelvin Carter

Dover, Kent, U.K.

Ms. Bagshaw has written a moving story about the hardships and joys experienced by a mother and her young family as they took all their remaining possessions over rough prairie country at the turn of the century. Brushes with Indians, desperados, and the hostilities of nature make for an enjoyable read. Their experiences make modern life sound terribly dull by comparison.

I can barely wait for the sequel Ms. Bagshaw promises!

“Okiefanatic” (Derwood, MD USA)