Hattie Ever After by Kirby Larson
Readers with groupie-tendencies (like me), take careful note: Hattie Ever After is positive proof that if you ask an author enough times for more, you just might receive. “When I left Hattie at the end of Hattie Big Sky,” confesses Kirby Larson in her ending “Author’s Note,” “I had no intention of writing another book about her. But so many readers have emailed or written to find out what happened next – I was even once collared in the grocery store! – that I began to wonder about it myself.” Lucky readers: wonder no more …
With the Muellers settled in Seattle, Uncle Chester’s prairie homestead left behind, and her debts completely paid, Hattie has little reason not to move on herself. She’s spent enough time working at Brown’s Boardinghouse in nearby Great Falls, Montana, “in just the sort of job I left Iowa to escape.” Finally untethered, she can admit at least to herself: “I had thrown a lasso around a dream even bigger than a Montana farm. I wanted to be a reporter.”
With intrepid journalist Nellie Bly as her inspiration – “Women like Nellie Bly did Grand Things; that was how they got to be real writers” – Hattie heads West, serendipitously taking on the temporary job of “wardrobe mistress” with a traveling acting troupe that stops through Brown’s just long enough for Hattie pick up stakes once more. Serendipity continues to guide her in San Francisco, as the troupe’s ingénue takes Hattie “under her wing,” and introduces Hattie to her brother who happens to be reporter at the Chronicle. Let Hattie’s Big City adventures begin!
From tracking down Uncle Chester’s “scoundrel” past to figuring out her future with the one man with whom she is “meant to grow old together,” Hattie has much to do – from striking out a sports reporter to helping a cousin she never knew she had to replacing a world-famous Italian opera star in the air. And then there’s that little matter of Hattie Ever After hopefully progressing toward Happy Ever After …
Six years might have elapsed in realtime between Big Sky and this sequel, but Larson obviously knows how to reel her readers right back in. Grab on … the ride was completely worth the wait.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2013
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