Girl Waits With Gun – Amy Stewart
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Drunken Botanist comes an enthralling novel based on the forgotten, true story of one of the US’s first female deputy sheriffs.
Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mould. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters from the city to the country fifteen years before. When a powerful, ruthless factory owner runs down their buggy, a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their farm. The sheriff enlists her help, and it turns out that Constance has a knack for outwitting (and disarming) the criminal element, which might just take her back out into the world and onto a new path in life.
Through Amy Stewart’s exuberant storytelling, Constance Kopp catapults from a forgotten historical anecdote to an unforgettable historical-fiction heroine – an outsized woman not only ahead of her time, but sometimes even ahead of ours.
My thanks to Molly at Scribe for my review copy.
Using source documents and reports from around 100 years ago Amy Stewart has written a fun tale about Constance Kopp, a real life character caught up in some very hazardous situations.
Constance and her sisters find themselves facing off against an unsavoury and powerful adversary in the form of a local factory owner. His reckless driving caused a crash and damaged Constance’s buggy – the repair bill of $50 is a significant sum and Constance is not prepared to write it off. However the factory owner is not keen to pay and it is not long before Constance and her sisters find themselves fearing for their safety when bricks (with warning messages) are thrown through the windows of their home in the wee small hours.
Yet Constance has another concern demanding her time. Her initial endeavours to have her $50 repair bill settled has brought her into contact with a young girl who is hunting for her baby, taken when the mother was not in ‘a good place’ to care for the baby. Constance is determined to do all she can to help track down what happened to the baby and pass word back to the anxious mother.
Amy Stewart tells a fun story in a style very much reflective of the time the story is set. There is almost a quaint or twee feel to the read and I found that I was flicking pages at a fair old rate as the story flowed and the world was built around me. Not my normal style of story and perhaps a little less action oriented than I would ordinarily go for.
HOWEVER…Girl Waits With Gun was a fun read, I enjoyed the time I spent with Constance and when I finished the book I was genuinely glad I had taken the time to read it. Although I said it was not my normal choice of story it is still a very entertaining book and I like to mix up what I read when the opportunity arises.
Perhaps one best suited for the girls as the boys, in the main, don’t fare too well or come across in a very positive light. It is a charming read, nicely balanced with actual historical influences and (coming on the back of a few of the more ‘graphic’ books I have read recently) it was a refreshing change of pace.
Girl Waits With Gun is published by Scribe and is available in paperback and digital format here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Waits-Gun-Constance-Kopp/dp/1925228576/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457877176&sr=1-1&keywords=girl+waits+with+gun