Candy, Nuts and Ladies Underwear

I would have posted yesterday, but I was up late finishing a real find.

It’s the 1930s in Middle Swan, Colorado. Hennie, who was made a young widow by the Civil War, doesn’t want to leave her mountain home, but her daughter Mae wants her to come live with her. As she enters her last seasons in Middle Swan, Hennie meets Nit, a young woman seeking to buy a prayer. Through coffee cake and quilting, Hennie helps the new arrival acclimate to life in the small gold mining town.

Through Hennie’s recollections and reflections, Sandra Dallas pieces together bits of romance, loss, and retribution in Prayers for Sale. Her language more than anything creates a sense of time and place. Nit’s husband fears being hoovered from his tenuous job on the dredge but looks forward to a tasty hereafter (dessert). Middle Swaners take leave of one another with “tap ‘er light.” The final leaving is referred to as a planting.

Should you read this one? As Nit likes to say,“Hello yes!” This one's sound as a dollar.