Kathleen Ernst, prolific writer of children's and adult books (check out her Hanneke Bauer and Chloe Ellefson mystery series) took me on a poetic journey back in time. I lived among the Midwestern women she brings to life, swaying along with them on ocean waves, arriving and needing to work from sunrise to past sunset to build home and community.The poem “Christmas Orange” made me reflect on how an object as commonplace as an orange could mean so much to women trying to survive in harsh conditions. (“The gift became a promise, an orb of spring, talisman against blizzards and blows and bleak gray skies.”)“Knitting Needles,” “Window,” and “First Winter,” made me pause to think about the heart-wrenching decisions desperate women were forced to make. In “First Winter,” the wife is worried her husband “missed the barn, stumbled blind onto the prairie,” and “died ice-pelted and calling her name.” With the cabin door drifted in, she decides to shatter her beloved window so she can set out to find him.Kathleen’s well-chosen words also highlight the joy women found in family, friends, and community. (“We have done well, Linnea sometimes told Andreas as she poured, and while he spoke proud of crops and stockshe’d smile and sip her coffee, at last content.”)