Friday, June 15, 2018

Review, Guest Post, and Giveaway: This Wilderness Journey by Misty M. Beller

About the Book

Title: The Wilderness Journey

Author: Misty M. Beller

Release Date: April 24, 2018

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

He’s been sent to retrieve the new missionary… But she’s not at all who he expects to find.

Joseph Malcom has spent his life protecting those in need, but now that his sister is safely settled with her new family in the Canadian Rockies, his help is no longer required. That is, until he’s asked to safely retrieve the priest’s cousin to help minister to the local Indian tribe. But his passenger is not at all who he expects.

After the death of her mother, Monti Bergeron has nothing to keep her in Montreal. While the prospect of ministering to the Indians out West is daunting, she looks forward to assisting her beloved cousin in his mission work. The life of a nun may be just what she needs to heal her grief, serving her Heavenly Father and fellow mankind, especially if no more pesky suitors are around to ask for her hand in marriage. But the man who’s been sent to guide her through the mountains might make her second-guess her plans before she even begins.

As Monti settles into her ministry, Joseph finds his wandering feet drawn back to the Indian camp. Monti’s focus on God is more unsettling than he’d like to admit. Add to that her beauty which tests his willpower at every turn, and she’s made it crystal clear she doesn’t want a husband. But when his determination to keep distance between them puts Monti in danger, protecting her might require something Joseph might not be able to give.

Click here to purchase your copy.

My Thoughts:

I have wanted to read a book by author Misty M. Beller for a while now, and This Wilderness Journey was my first. This is a story about a young woman, Monti, who has lost everything and is coming into the Canadian frontier to be a missionary alongside her cousin to the Native peoples. This is also a story of Joseph Malcom, who has been in Canada for a little while with his twin sister’s family.

Both characters are carrying around a lot of baggage. Joseph due the fact that he is a wanderer: forever looking for something to make him happy. Add to that his is crippled in one hand due to an accident. In Monti’s case we get glimpses of what her past life was like. I do wish we had more of a backstory on her, but both are looking for some kind of forever.

I liked the setting and getting a glimpse of the Canadian frontier and the tribes who lived there. This was a romance through and through which I enjoyed immensely and I look forward to more of Beller’s works.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel. I was not required to post a positive review and all views and opinions are my own.

About the Author

Misty M. Beller writes romantic mountain stories, set on the 1800s frontier and woven with the truth of God’s love.

She was raised on a farm in South Carolina, so her Southern roots run deep. Growing up, her family was close, and they continue to keep that priority today. Her husband and daughters now add another dimension to her life, keeping her both grounded and crazy.

God has placed a desire in Misty’s heart to combine her love for Christian fiction and the simpler ranch life, writing historical novels that display God’s abundant love through the twists and turns in the lives of her characters.

Guest Post from Misty Beller

The Frontier Cook

I love to write frontier romance, where the challenges were tough and the people had to be even tougher. And one of the things I love to imagine is how my characters cooked during those days.

Can you imagine how hard it would be to cook over an open fire? Every. Single. Meal. Of course, it’s not like they had a lot of variety to work with. Once you learned how to make a decent stew or corn mush, you didn’t have much to worry about, right?

Yet, many of the frontier women became quite adept at cooking over their cabin’s hearth, or even over an open campfire. In my new book, This Wilderness Journey, Monti (the heroine) came from a middle-class home with a paid chef and never had to learn to cook at all, much less without the use of a wood stove (which is still so much harder than heating a hot-pocket in the microwave). After she burned the corn mush their first night on the trail through the Canadian wilderness, Joseph (the hero) taught her a few basic meals.

As I was researching some creative ways frontier women cooked in an open hearth, I discovered the wide use of puddings, mostly because of how easy they were to make. By wrapping the ingredients in a cloth or pudding bag, they could be dropped in a pot of boiling water and left until the ingredients had softened and expanded. An entire meal could be made with a few ingredients, a pudding cloth, and a pot of boiling water.

One of my favorite cooking scenes in This Wilderness Journey is the making of the Oatmeal Pudding. What do you think? Sound like something you’d like to try?