Booklist Reviews
Gr. 6^-10. Finished by his daughter with the help of editors at HarperCollins, this title completes the late MacBride's Rose Years series, a fictionalized chronicle of Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter. Readers meet Rose as a restless teenager in the early 1900s, just out of high school in Mansfield, Missouri, eager for adventure and broader vistas. Just as eager to secure a commitment from cautious, conventional suitor Paul Cooley, Rose journeys to Kansas City to learn telegraphy, find a job, and prove to Paul that she can help him earn a living when they are married. A better job lands her in San Francisco, where Rose finds herself the object of dashing Gillette Lane's attention. Although heavily dependent on MacBride's earlier work about Rose, this novel portrays a young single woman's life and the urban job scene of a century ago in a highly appealing fashion. Charming pencil sketches by Dan Andreasen top it off. ((Reviewed December 1, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews
Horn Book Guide Reviews
When seventeen-year-old Rose Wilder leaves home to train as a telegraph operator, she runs into financial and personal difficulties but is determined to make her own way. The second half of the book, in which Rose lands a lucrative job but falls in with a questionable group of friends, is less credible than the beginning, and the ending of the novel--which is also the conclusion of the series--is unsatisfying.Copyright 2000 Horn Book Guide Reviews