A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher

A Sudden Country" is a wonderful story. From a short diary kept by a then 11 year old ancestor, whose family joined the two thousand emigrants to Oregon in the mid 1840's, Fisher has woven a tale that captures you on several levels. The daily detail of making camp and traveling, the drudgery, the different reasons and approaches are all fascinating and ring true. The love story between the wife reluctant but obligated to follow her husband and the mountain man, whose own wife left him and whose children have died, is one of great stories about the intersection between passion and daily life. How to balance, how to choose, what to choose... It is small actions that make our larger choices sometimes.

One of my favorite quotes: "They wore each other more easily than they once had. They fit, like old clothes of which little was expected but comfort. Because affection, she had learned, was such a civilized thing compared to love. It exacted so much less and was therefore more enduring. And endurable."