Faithful

Faithful by Janet Fox

She went in search of answers, and discovered a love she never expected. A Love as wild as the west itself.

My review:
I loved this book, but I don’t think everyone will. Faithful is a historical fiction set in the upper-class Newport and the Wild West of Yellowstone National Park.
Margaret Bennet struggles between becoming what society deems appropriate and accepting who she is. Her mother is missing, her father is lying and she is being thrust into the arms of a repulsive man.
This book hits home for several reasons that I won’t explicitly share here on the blog, but I know what it’s like to be shipped away from home, to have everything, then nothing and how you have to grow along the way.
Faithful has leanings toward a more romantic style of writing, and fans of Daphe Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Charles Dickens, or Bronte’s Wuthering Heights will love the flow and rhythm of the chapters. However, if you are a purely modern reader, I would just skip this one.

I’ve heard many people from the blog’o’sphere discussing how a book is either a love story, with a “perfect” guy at the center, or it’s nothing, and I find that to be tiresomely true in most cases. If you are looking for a faulty heroine, who must grow extensively for you to see the real character; if you want the love story to only add, not overpower from the books thesis, this is the read for you. The book is about Maggie and her Mama, not Maggie and a boy, not Maggie and the wrong man. It’s fresh, the ideas are beautiful, the writing is gorgeous, full of foreshadowing, symbolism and rich descriptions of the land Fox lived in for thirty years.
I am very excited for Forgiven, which will be released May/June 2011. I hope the sequel will be the love story, since Will served more to help Maggie grow as a woman, than as a lover, in Faithful.

Teaser: I know a place on this Earth that contains wonders enough to stop the breath. A place where the very rocks whisper and whine, where the rivers boil and the snow-studded peaks thrust into a bowl of blue; where great shaggy beasts press the Earth with cloven hooves or threaten with claw and fang; where new life and lurking death coexist in the shallows of varicolored pools.
I went to this place to search for what I had lost, but instead found a life unexpected.

-from the prolouge of Faithful, by Janet Fox

Thoughts on the cover: I love the idea of this cover, the photography is gorgeous and I greatly appreciate that, as scenic photography is one of the great things that affects Maggie so deeply, but the model is all wrong. The model on the cover of Forgiven looks like Maggie, thank goodness, but the blond in the modern green dress does not resemble wild Margaret from 1904.

Notes on the Names: All very appropriate for their class. Upper class consisted of: Margaret, Edward, Kitty, George and Gretchen. Working Class consisted of: Mina, Tom, Jonas and Bill. The Wild Class consisted of: Kula and Nat. Kula is considered to be a guiding name, given as a title to those who lead people to the answers they seek.