The Daughter's Walk

Finished March 27
The Daughter's Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick
This is a book that appealed to me as soon as I saw it. Based on a true story, this novel takes the facts that exist about this young woman and weaves a story around them.
In the late 1890s, Helga Etsby and her daughter Clara agreed to walk from Spokane, Washington to New York City. This was a story that was hushed up by Helga's family, and I became interested after reading a book about that walk called Bold Spirit. The book tells a shorter story of the walk from the daughter, Clara's, point of view and then goes beyond it. The author had also heard the story and was intrigued that Clara distanced herself from the family for many years and changed her name. She did a lot of research around Clara, and was able to find out a few things about her. She took this and family memories as well as other research and built this wonderful story around it. The story fills in where the facts leave off, but feels like it could have happened this way. Clara comes alive here and becomes her own person, something she didn't do in the earlier nonfiction book. I really liked the way the author took the facts and built a story around them that fit. This was a great read and very interesting.