Sweet Fields Beyond: A Novel of the Iowa Frontier - Hardcover

Hall, Nancy Johnston

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798218827229

Publisher: Stoneview Press, 2025

Synopsis

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING TALE OF SURVIVAL, MORAL RECKONING AND THE MAKING OF HOME IN A WILD LAND

THE YEAR IS 1837. When widow Louisa Evans, with no belongings or purpose, joins her sister and brother-in-law on a 700-mile arduous trek by wagon train from Pennsylvania, she hopes for a fresh start. Their destination is the Black Hawk Purchase-a wild, unsettled expanse along the Mississippi, soon to be called Iowa.

AND THE JOURNEY WEST IS ONLY THE BEGINNING ...

WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES, Louisa and her brother-in-law, Isaac, must build a farm alone on virgin land-enduring backbreaking labor, shared grief, and impossible moral choices. Through her unflinching journal, Louisa records each trial in a voice both lyrical and candid-a widow's quiet passage from invisibility toward self-possession.

About this title

About the Author

NANCY JOHNSTON HALL, a medical journalist with a special interest in the history of medicine, was inspired to write a fictionalized version of her own ancestors' stories who were among the first settlers in the Blackhawk Territory of (now) southeastern lowa. She carefully researched period customs, language, medicine and culture to ensure historical authenticity, drawing from women's journals, original documents, lowa frontier records, and an evocative letter from her great-great-grandmother, passed down through the generations. She lives with her husband, deep in a woods near Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stoneview Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798218827229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 314