Courting Miss Hattie

Courting Miss Hattie

Pamela Morsi

Genre: Historical – Early 20th century American

Publication Info.: Bantam Books, 1998, ISBN: 9780553761955

 

I originally put off reading this book because the description didn’t capture my imagination.  Miss Hattie Colfax owns and runs her own farm and at 29, she’s missed the first round of marriages.  At this point, her best hope of a husband and children of her own is to marry a widower.  I always like a spinster story, but it was something about the “lady farmer” description that just didn’t appeal to me.  It didn’t seem very romantic.  Which is fitting because Hattie Colfax isn’t very romantic–at least, she hasn’t been until now.  Her life hasn’t allowed for it.  She grew up fast with too much responsibility to waste on youthful fun.  And, she isn’t pretty.  She hasn’t received much (or any) romantic attention.  Which makes it all the more wonderful that her story is one of the most romantic and passionate I’ve ever read.  I’ve rarely been happier for another heroine.

Can you tell that it’s hard for me to remember that Hattie isn’t real?  That she isn’t sitting on her front porch swing with handsome, young Reed Tyler teaching her how to kiss: “There’s the peck, the peach, and the malvalva.”  I know–it was an education for me, too.  If a little more about her strapping young sharecropper had made its way onto the copy material on the back of the book, I might have read Hattie’s story sooner.  What’s not romantic about a good-looking, well-built man discovering his employer is also a woman…and then doing something about it?

Courting Miss Hattie is why I love romance as a genre.  It’s filled with colorful characters and complex relationships; nothing is two-dimensional.  Even the antagonists become sympathetic by the story’s end.  A rare switch in perspective and suddenly I’m sympathizing with the “bad guy.”  In fact, this is something at which Pamela Morsi is deft, and there aren’t many authors who can do this.  It leaves me appreciating the complexities of people and our relationships.   It leaves me appreciating Ms. Morsi, who, in a few words, manages to hone in on those characteristics that define a person, so even minor characters jump to life: “Millie Jessup always referred to her husband as ‘the reverend,’ even though everyone else in the country called him Preacher Able.”

It’s because of this that I would recommend any and all (okay, I haven’t read all, but darn near) of Morsi’s books.  She’s reliably awesome.  If, for whatever reason (“lady farmer” or no), Courting Miss Hattie doesn’t appeal to you, grad anything else of hers–anything at all–and eventually you’ll read Courting Miss Hattie as well.  You won’t be able to help yourself, and you’ll be glad you did.