Laurel's Dream

Title: My Heart Belongs in the Blue Ridge: Laurel's Dream

Series: My Heart Belongs in...

Author: Pepper Basham

Publisher: Barbour Books

Genre: Historical Fiction, Christian Fiction, Romance

Source: Kindle Own

My review:

I enjoy Pepper Basham's works. She possesses an incredible talent for bringing the words on the page alive with her vivid descriptions and attention to detail.

I am at a loss of words to portray all that I am thinking and feeling about this particular book. Just know that whatever words I actually get written here will not adequately do justice to this multilayered novel.

All Laurel wanted was a few minutes of peace and quiet from a day full of chores to disappear into the pages of a good book. What was the use of being a grown woman if she couldn't even hide long enough to read one chapter?

While Laurel's Dream was more serious than what I am used to from Basham, it still had the hints of humor and bookish details that I have come to love and expect from her.  Her leading lady, Laurel, is a sweetheart. She brings joy and humor to everything she does, and you can't help but love her. Teacher, aka, Jonathon Taylor, is an excellent leading man. While he comes to the Blue Ridge for multiple reasons, including teaching, he has not left his dream of being a doctor behind.

That woman could stretch the truth from here to the horizon and back again.

Laurel and Jonathan ignite a friendship over their shared love of books. Neither one is looking for love, they are both in hot pursuit of their dreams. 

He was the teacher and yet she found words to express something he'd been trying to voice since sunrise.

There are some heavier topics in Laurel's Dream, from the opposition the teacher faces as an outsider, to the way some people think of African Americans (it is 1918), and alcoholism, to name a few. Basham respectably deals with these topics, and the story does lean more toward a lighter read than a heavier one.

She had so little compared to him and yet, somehow, he wondered if she didn't possess something more intangible and precious than he'd ever known.

As the story closed, I still had questions. Several things were addressed, but not resolved. The main story line, however, does come to a wonderful conclusion. That is all I can say without giving spoilers! I would recommend this story to anyone who loves a good historical fiction novel.

★★★★/5

Synopsis (from Goodreads): 

Journey into the Blue Ridge Mountains of 1918 where Laurel McAdams endures the challenges of a hard life while dreaming things can eventually improve. But trouble arrives in the form of an outsider. Having failed his British father again, Jonathan Taylor joins is uncle's missionary endeavors as a teacher in a two-room schoolhouse. Laurel feels compelled to protect the tenderhearted teacher from the harsh realities of Appalachian life, even while his stories of life outside the mountains pull at Laurel's imagination. Faced with angry parents over teaching methods, Laurel's father's drunken rages, and bad news from England, will Jonathan leave and never return, or will he stay and let love bloom?