Where the Lost Wander

If Elsa Dutton is your favorite Yellowstone character then this book is for you. This book shows the horrors and the hope in the American West. It also features some very important figures in history during the time that you may not have heard of otherwise. A blend of fiction and reality.

An all around beautiful and heartbreaking book.

Ummmm ok I have thoughts... first of all, i went into this with a very positive and hopeful mindset and it still managed to bore me like 25% of the time. The truth is, Harmon starts the book with the climax - the “omg I can’t believe that happened” event. And then circles back to the beginning but oh my god everything leading up to the climax is pretty much super boring and totally obvious. So it’s like prologue - BOOM. and then the rest of the book goes downhill (adventure and excitement-wise) from there. I mean, it’s a book about the Oregon trail. I’ve played the computer game - I know how it works. But my god virtually shooting water buffalo in the game was more fun than this book. The romance was super typical love at first sight type stuff between a spunky artist heroine and a half Indian tall, strong and quiet hero. Nothing groundbreaking. Life on the road’s tough. Feet hurt. We get it. If your idea of dramatic emotional storytelling is just writing one (sometimes two) dimensional characters and killing them off for shock value then this might be for you. I probably won’t pick up another Harmon novel. I wanted to love this book because of the many fond memories I have of spending hours playing my Oregon trail computer game. But this book was a harlequin romance version of that game. Maybe it would impress a thirteen year old. This is also the last time I read a book solely because the cover is pretty.

If you enjoyed the tv show 1883 and wanted more I would recommend this book.

This book starts in May 1853 following John Lowry and the May family.

I loved reading this book. The plot, characters, scenery and the pace is great.

lovely western, bought on a whim but was not disappointed. loved the honesty of it. we need more tales like this.

I really did have high hopes for this book. I just finished reading "The Four Winds" by Kristin Hannah so I was in a historical fiction mood when I decided to read this book. For me, I thought that this book was overall boring... it did not get interesting until more than half way into it (I have this crazy obsession that I have to finish a book once I start it.. no matter how uninterested I am). The only hope was after reading the prologue I was determined to find out what happens to Naomi and her family. Overall, it was very hard to keep me interested and was just overall disappointed :\

This was a really good book. Nothing was sugar coated. It felt like everything the characters went through was genuinely real. There was no unrealistic saving grace. I gave it 4 starts instead of 5, because there was no mega wow factor for me in the book, but I was in tears several times towards the end of the book! I have another book by this author on my shelf that I haven’t read yet, so I’m looking forward to that one!

I mostly read historical fiction novels set during WWII so this book was a breath of fresh air. The story is set on the Oregon Trail in 1853. Naomi May and her family together with others are travelling on a wagon train from Missouri to California to start a new life. John Lowry, a half-Pawnee half-white, is the one leading the train. He has no intention of moving to California but it has changed when he meets Naomi. The book started with a prologue which was horrifying that you would want to know the events that leads to that incident and what happened after. The cast of characters were fleshed out and memorable. It didn’t bother me that Naomi and John instantly fell in love with each other because the chemistry between them was strong. Life was hard for them but they’re both brave and strong. This was a slow read (at least for me) but I thought it was meant to read like that. You need to savour every moments in this book which wasn’t hard because of the author’s remarkable way of telling the story. She didn’t sugarcoat things and this made this book more heartbreaking yet hopeful and powerful. The hardship, challenges, and loss that the characters went through were raw and felt so real. This was already the third book (one was also from Once Upon A Book Club Box) I read from the author and I’m still fascinated by her beautiful and flawless writing. This book is also inspired by real people and one of them was John Lowry. He was the five times great grandfather of the author’s husband. I haven’t read a lot of books about Native Americans so I couldn’t really say a lot about the accuracy but I could say that this book was well researched. I liked that author showed us the good and the bad sides of both the pioneers and Indians. I also liked the author’s statement on the author’s note in the end. Where the Lost Wander was a captivating read and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for an amazing historical romance novel.