Mimi

1. This is Book Two of a projected series. Nobody told me to listen to The Winter Wolf first.

2. This is not very good writing. It lost my respect early on when a chaste lady from the hoopskirt era -- and in chilly weather -- follows an interesting young man into a lake in the wilderness of Alaska! This might be Parry's idea of a neat story, but not mine.

3. Ruth Ann Phimister is probably not the narrator, as the narrator I heard is definitely a man! Ruth Ann has a soft, rich, very womanly voice. She could certainly sound like a rough man, but to narrate the whole thing as a rough man doesn't make sense!

4. Wyatt Earp's article in Wikipedia is better than this story! Evidently one of Earp's common-law wives was a Blaylock, and she was the mother of the young man in this story.

5. AUDIBLE'S MARKETING DOES NO GOOD IF PEOPLE ARE STEERED TOWARD UNSUITABLE BOOKS. According to Pubglisher's Weekly, this is a "formula western". I have already been wrongly steered to a kids' book and sappy Christian romance. Not good!

6. I tried to learn something about the author, but met up mainly with Richard Lloyd Parry, not the same person at all, tho this Parry seems to be riding in his windstream.

Somehow I had expected this would be simply Tom Paine's writing, not a whole book about him. History, philosophy and politics are not my strengths, but I've lived long enough and traveled enough that I do care about these things. I found another audio book on the same topics, Founding Brothers, very difficult listening, although I believed it was well narrated. This book by contrast is almost suspenseful. The narrator reads with great understanding, but the book is written so as to be interesting. This author has an exciting mind!

Back in high school I didn't really get it about the deists. And who cared about the Louisiana Purchase? Paine was already trying to solve the problem of slavery, develop a plan for freed slaves. Paine even foresaw a need for a welfare system. Well, goodness! It's a most stimulating book. Educational, exciting, most worthwhile.