Hattie Ever After by Kirby Larson

This novel is the sequel to Hattie Big Sky which was written in 2006. It's hard to write a sequel so many years after the first successful book but Larson does a reasonably good job. The conclusion to the Hattie story will garner Hattie, a new generation of fans.

Hattie Ever After picks up Hattie Inez Brooks' story after she has left her Uncle Chester's homestead. It is now June 1919 and Hattie has been working at Mrs. Brown's boardinghouse in Great Falls, Montana, as a maid. She has just posted the final cheque payment to Mr. Nefzeger for her uncle's IOU. 

Hattie doesn't know what's next but she does know that she wants to be a reporter. And then there's the matter of her dear friend, Charlie Hawley who's returned safely from the trenches of World War I, and who wants to settle down and marry her. It's not that Hattie doesn't love Charlie, but Hattie's not sure her place in the world is with Charlie.

At night after work, Hattie spends time scribbling in notebooks, copying poems and inspiring words. She also writes "practice" articles, the first being about Mrs. Brown's neighbour, Sam Blessing. She's written movie reviews and about library programs but has submitted nothing for publication.

Hattie's life takes a dramatic turn, when a vaudeville troupe, the Varietals, arrives at the boarding house, and the wardrobe mistress, Sylvia elopes with the magician, Cecil Hall! Impulsively, Hattie decides to accept an offer from Miss Vera Clare, an actress with the troupe. Hattie will travel to San Francisco with the Varietals, replacing the missing troupe member, at which point they will look for someone to replace her. Hattie receives a letter from Leafie Purvis and inside is a second letter that was sent by Ruth Danvers from San Francisco to Chester Wright with a Mercury coin as a token of her love for him. The letter asks him to return the toke in person in San Francisco. Hattie wonders just who was Ruth Danvers and was she possibly Chester's lost love?

Then as Hattie is preparing the large mid-day meal, Charlie Hawley arrives at the back door. It's been two years since Hattie saw him off to fight in the war and now he's a young man at nineteen. After the midday dinner, Hattie goes for a walk with Charlie and he tells her that he has been hired by The Boeing Airplane Company in Seattle. Although Hattie is thrilled for Charlie and she knows he expects her to move to Seattle to be his wife, she reveals that she cannot go with him at this time. Hattie states that homesteading has changed her and that the war has changed  him. She reveals that she is leaving for San Francisco the very next day with the Varietals, that "...this is my season for something else." Charlie is stunned and deeply hurt. They part ways with Hattie promising to write and Charlie saying he may not be able to return the favour.

In San Francisco, Hattie is impressed by the size of the city, the streetcars and the stylish men and women. Maude Kirk who is a member of the Varietals helps Hattie adjust to life with the troupe.While Mr. Lancaster and Miss Clare are checked into the Fairmont, Hattie, Maude, and the rest of the troupe are put up at Hotel Cortez. Hattie has her first meal at a Chinese restaurant and the next morning visits "Newspaper Row" where the offices of the Chronicle, The Examiner and the Call are located. She decides to enter the Chronicle building and finds herself whisked into the elevator by a group of girls applying to be a telephone operator. But all Hattie finds herself applying for is a cleaning position at the Chronicle as she isn't a high school graduate, can't type and hasn't been to a secretarial school. 

In a remarkable coincidence, it turns out that Maude's brother Ned is a reporter with the Chronicle and she intends for Ned to give Hattie a tour.But first Hattie decides to visit Ruth Danvers at Covington Apartment Hotel where she lives. However, Ruth is at work at the Pacific Building, as a personal assistant to Mr. Stuart Wilkes. Hattie meets with Ruth and fills her in on Chester and her life at the homestead. After lunch with Ruth, Hattie is helped to buy a new outfit and shoes and then she walks to the Chronicle. The newspaper had sent a message for her to come to their offices. But when she's there, Hattie inadvertently runs into Ned Kirk who immediately offers to give her a tour.

He tells her that Maude told him she has published homilies but Hattie swears him to secrecy. Ned also tells her that the young men hanging around the hallway outside the newsroom are just waiting for their big break. In the chaos of the newsroom she sees only one woman, Miss Marjorie D'Lacorte who is a writer after the way of Nellie Bly. From their Ned takes her to a noisy room housing the printing press, and the editorial room, as well as the "morgue" which holds all the back issues of the newspaper. At the end Hattie is approached by the woman who took her application for a job.  After discreetly leaving Ned, she accompanies the woman who  Hattie is given a job as a cleaner working the graveyard shift. However when she meets up with Ned again in the elevator it is clear he believes she's been hired as part of the steno pool. Hattie does not correct his misunderstanding. Instead she goes to dinner with him at a fancy restaurant.

During dinner at New Delmonico's, Hattie questions Ned about being a reporter and about women reporters. Ned tells Hattie that if she wants to become a reporter she has to write something new and different, that will have a connection to the San Francisco area. Hattie asks Ned to get her access to the morgue as she wants to investigate her Uncle Chester's past.

During a visit with Ruth Danvers, Hattie learns that Ruth's daughter, Pearl will now be coming home to San Francisco. She offers to help Ruth make Pearl a quilt but supper is off as Ruth has been invited to dinner with Mr. Wilkes. On her first night on the clean job at the Chronicle, Hattie meets Emmaline McLeary (Spot) and Bernice, Percy the night guard. As the days go by, Hattie uses her two o'clock break in the morning to search through the back issues of the San Francisco Chronicle. Hattie discovers that her uncle, Chester Hubert Wright arrived in San Francisco at least by Wednesday May 12, 1915 and was registered at the Sutter Hotel. It was the time of the Panama Pacific International Exposition.

While cleaning the newsroom, Hattie finds a note scribbled on a scrap of paper questioning the date of an event in a few years earlier. Hattie decides to research the event in the morgue and leaves a note on the typewriter providing the answer. Ned somehow learns that this was Hattie's doing and brings the managing editor, Mr. Monson to her. At Ned's suggestion she is offered a job as a researcher for the newsroom while still working as a cleaner at night. Near the end of her two-week probation, Hattie secures her first writing assignment covering a baseball game and is published under the nom de plume of Dora Dean used by the paper's women writers. Meanwhile, Hattie and Charlie have resumed their correspondence.

On a walk along the beach with Ned, Hattie is offered to work with him on a project about President Woodrow Wilson's work to create the League of Nations. Hattie agrees to work with him but only if she is allowed to do some writing and if it's published, they share a byline. Ned reluctantly agrees. And then suddenly Charlie shows up in Snn Francisco. The opera star, Luisa Terrazzini wants pilot Eddie Hubbard to fly her over San Francisco and Hubbard wanted Charlie as his mechanic. Hattie is driven to the airport by Marjorie D'Lacorte and when Luisa's ride is nixed by her manager, Hattie takes her place. This leads to a piece published on page two of the Chronicle.

Then one night Hattie stumbles upon a shocking discovery: Chester is accused of attempting to cash a forged bank draft. As if that isn't enough, Hattie experiences her first earthquake as San Francisco on September 4, 1919. At this time she hands out copies of her Female 49ers: San Francisco Women Who Find Gold In Their Work, a series of stories about women who work in the city. Hattie want's to give each of the girls she interviewed a copy. When Mr. Monson sees the article, he decides to hire Hattie as a reporter and plans to run her stories over a series of eight Sundays in the hopes of drawing in new women readers. But Hattie's really big break comes about when she ends up trapped in an elevator with President Woodrow Wilson for an hour and she gets published with her own byline. 

Just when Hattie believes she's making good progress she discovers that Ned is rewriting her Female 49ers stories! Hattie believed Ned was her partner, but maybe he's not what she thought he was. And as it turns out, neither is Ruth Danvers or her Uncle Chester. However, from these bitter experiences, Hattie is able to learn a very important lesson.

Discussion

Hattie Ever After continues the story of a young prairie girl determined to make it as a reporter in the post World War I era. In her Author's Note at the back, Larson writes that she never thought about writing a second novel, but fans of Hattie demanded one! This novel is set in San Francisco. The story is told is Hattie's first person narration, and includes correspondence between Hattie and Charlie, Ruby and Perilee. 

Hattie is an ambitious, young woman determined to become a reporter. The focus of this novel is on her efforts to achieve that goal.  It is 1919 and Hattie has left Montana for the big city of San Francisco.  She turns down her best friend, Charlie Hawley's offer of marriage, because she fears "...that saying yes to him was saying no to myself. I needed to find my own place in the world."  Charlie has just returned from serving in World War I and has the expectation that Hattie will marry him. This turns out to not be the case. Charlie, deeply disappointed by her decision, moves on, taking his job with Boeing in Seattle. 

In San Francisco Hattie, with some help from Maude Kirk and her brother Ned who happens to be a reporter, quickly manages to work her way in the San Francisco Chronicle, first as a cleaner, then as a cub reporter and finally as a reporter. As she works towards becoming a reporter, Hattie also attracts the interest of Ned Kirk. 

When Charlie arrives in San Francisco to help his friend Eddie Hubbard, he learns that Hattie is working as a cleaning lady as well as a researcher at the San Francisco Chronicle. He tells her, "I wish you'd been straight with me about the job. I think I deserved that." And he advises, "If a guy wants to be your fellow, he'd best learn to watch out for those snake balls you keep throwing.", a reference to Hattie's own type of pitch that hisses through the air and that most batters, including Charlie, cannot hit.

When Charlie presses Hattie about where he fits into her life, she doesn't have an answer for him. He tells her, "You know I wish the best for you. But I may have to start thinking about what's best for me. I'm sure you can understand that." And so Charlie goes back to Seattle to continue his work with Boeing. Despite her rejection, Charlie continues to support Hattie, offering her encouragement in his correspondence with her.  

In the meantime, Ned Kirk begins to be attentive to Hattie, suggesting that maybe they be together not just as partners at work. However Hattie quickly discovers that Ned has a jealous side: doesn't seem happy when she gets a scoop with the president and treats her like his helper, asking her to get him coffee. Hattie discovers he's rewriting her stories in her piece, Female 49ers.  But it is Marjorie D'Lacorte who provides Hattie with some perspective. As a successful woman reporter, Hattie considers her an icon to be looked up to. However, at dinner, Marjorie tells her, "This is a hard row you're hoeing, Hattie Brooks. I should know. I've been down it myself." When Hattie fails to understand her, Marjorie tells her that she noticed how both Hattie and Charlie were with each other - very happy to see the other. Hattie explains that he is a very good friend but that "...he wanted to make plans for us....And I need to make plans for me." Hattie believes that being a reporter and being married do not work. Marjorie tells her, "If you are looking for someone to emulate, I am not that person." Majorie intimates to Hattie that her life isn't all glamour. She also tells Hattie to  rethink her idea that she can have either a career or marriage.She points out that Hazel Archibald works at the Seattle Times and is married. As a result, Hattie to rethinks her relationship with Charlie, realizing that in him she has a faithful and supportive friend and with some imagination, she can have both the man she truly loves and the career she aspires to. 

It's important in writing historical fiction that the author be able to portray the setting realistically. Larson captured the essence of early 20th century San Francisco very well. The inclusion of postcards from the period help make the story feel realistic and allow the reader to visualize this bustling city. San Francisco has experienced many earthquakes and in this novel Larson does include the earthquake that occurred on September 4, 1919. This was not a major earthquake but it was felt in the San Francisco area. Readers are also given a sense of just how fast society is beginning to change in the early 20th century with Hattie realizing that her skirts are too long, airplanes and cars are the newest fads, and women who were working during the war want to keep their jobs! 

Larson does include a subplot involving Hattie's Uncle Chester, which adds some drama to the novel. Realistically this could have been left out of the story and while younger readers might not suspect Ruth Danvers, adults most certainly will! However, all of the troubles Hattie has experienced, losing the homestead,  and being cheated by Ruth Danvers do not teach Hattie to be less trusting of people as Ruth suggests. Instead, Hattie realizes that opening one's heart to a special person is what is important. And that is what leads her back to Charlie.  

A nice conclusion to the story of Hattie Ines Brooks Hawley!

Book Details:
Hattie Ever After by Kirby Larson
New York: Delacourte Press     2013
230 pp.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

Hattie Big Sky is a well-written novel that might be overlooked because of its generic historical fiction cover.  This young adult novel offers readers a delicious dose of the pioneer spirit set during the last year of World War I. Those who enjoyed the Laura Ingalls saga in Little House on the Prairie will certainly enjoy Hattie Big Sky and the recent sequel, Hattie Ever After.

It is December 1917. Sixteen year old Hattie Inez Brooks lives with her Aunt Ivy and Uncle Holt in Arlington, Iowa. Hattie lost both her parents when she was very young; her father was a miner who died from lung disease and her mother died a few years later from a fever. After her Mama died, her Aunt Seah took her in and was very loving towards her. But after Aunt Seah became too elderly to care for Hattie, she was passed from one relative to the next until she ended up in the home of her distant cousin, Uncle Holt. Aunt Ivy was not happy about this and now that Hattie is sixteen, she wants her to move out and work.

Hattie has a good friend in Charlie Hawley, a boy who stuck up for her, walked her to and from school every day. He also taught her how to throw a baseball properly and gave her a cat named Mr. Whiskers. Charlie enlisted in October and now in December is on his way to England and eventually to France. Although Hattie, along with the rest of the town believes Charlie is sweet on Mildred Powell, she decides to write him. When Charlie left for war, Hattie gave him a "wishing rock". 

One day Hattie receives a letter informing her that her Uncle Chester has bequeathed her his 320 acre land claim in Montana. The letter was written by Chester's neighbour, Perilee Meuller, who writes to tell Hattie that if she wants to come out to claim the land, they will help her. Knowing she has no future in Iowa in home where she is not loved,  Hattie decides to take a chance and move to Montana. So in January of 1918, she and Mr. Whiskers take the Great Northern Railway to Wolf Point, Montana. There she is met by Perliee Meuller and her husband, Karl, as well as Perilee's children, eight year old Chase, six year old Mattie and the baby, Fern. In Wolf Point, Hattie learns that in order to "prove up" on the claim, she must set 480 rods of fence and cultivate 40 acres of land by November 1918. She has no idea how she will accomplish this but Hattie decides that she needs to go to Montana because all her life she has been Hattie Here-and-There. Montana offers her the chance to have a real home of her own.

The Meuller's drive her out to the claim the next day, and Hattie is dismayed by what she sees. The house is a mere shack set in the middle of a vast tract of land and sky. While winter sets in, Hattie gradually adapts to the homesteading life, making good friends with Perilee and Karl, Rooster Jim a crochety, bad-smelling old friend of Chester's, and Leafie Purvis, an older woman who makes a living training horses.

Another person Hattie encounters is the handsome Traft Martin, a young man who runs his family's ranch, The Tipped M, which is the largest ranch in the area and which butts up against the northeast boundary of Hattie's claim. Traft is attracted to Hattie and tries to court her, but she isn't fooled by his good looks. It soon turns out that he has more than just courting on his mind. She also discovers that despite his winsome smile, Traft has a darker side. When Traft and those on the Council of Defense begin singling out Americans of German descent, Hattie refuses to follow along and break ties with the Meullers even after she is threatened by Traft. Tragedy follows tragedy but Hattie remains strong, faithful to those who have helped her, and learns about herself and life. Although Hattie works hard on her claim can she succeed in spite of bad weather, little money, and a rancher trying to steal her claim?

Discussion

In Hattie Big Sky, author Kirby Larson has crafted a truly delightful story that engages the reader right from the beginning. Hattie is a strong heroine, determined to make her way in the world, despite terrible odds in a troubling time. She remains true to herself when she stands up, at great personal risk, for those who are being unjustly attacked only because they come from a country that America is at war with. In this way, Hattie demonstrates that she is maturing into a principled adult who knows what she believes in and acts on those beliefs.

Hattie's story is told in a strong first person narrative but also includes the letters she writes to Charlie and Uncle Holt as well as her submissions about homesteading to the Arlington News. This allows us to know something about Charlie and to see how both Charlie and Hattie change over the year. Charlie's view of the war changes in that time. At first he brags about killing Germans, but later on when his best friend is killed, he realizes that killing another person is nothing to brag about. In Hattie's case, she came out to Montana to find a home for herself, but instead found friends who were as good as family. Initially she was only concerned about herself, but as she matures, she begins to develop a concern for those around her.

Many of the characters in the book are memorable, from Rooster Jim with his wild ways, to Perilee and Karl, the stoic couple who help Hattie and who are attacked because Karl is German. Traft Martin, who at first seems like a potential love interest, is revealed as a complex character. Even the animals have interesting personalities as evidenced by the hilarious descriptions of Hattie's cow, Violet, and the three hens she gets from Rooster Jim.

Hattie Big Sky is a wonderful novel about the meaning of friendship and loyalty, finding your place in the world and coming of age.

Larson indicates that many of the events in the novel actually happened. It was her great-grandmother Hattie Inez Brooks Wright who homesteaded in Montana. While doing her research on homesteading during World War I, Larson realized that anti-German sentiment was very common during this time period and therefore, needed to be part of the story.

Book Details:
Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
New York: Delacorte Press 2006
289 pp.