Troublesome Creek
Jan Watson
Tyndale, Nov 2005, $12.99, 372 pp.
ISBN: 1414304471

In 1881 in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky, Grace and Will Brown argue over educating their daughter Laura, known by most as Copper. Grace wants to send her niece, whom she adopted when her sister died, to a fine school back east. Will, the biological father, wants Copper to stay at home.

Copper wonders if her stepmother does not love her, and how life would have been if her mom Julie has lived. At the same time, Grace knows she loves Will, but keeps a shameful secret from him; she threatened to give up the baby for adoption that her unmarried sister was carrying years ago. Instead Will married his beloved Julie, and when she died, came to Lexington to ask Grace to help raise her blood. These secrets threaten to cause more than trouble for a family that now include twin sons, but whose past has caught up with them, and has hidden the love that everyone shares but fears stating, let alone showing.

TROUBLESOME CREEK is an entertaining character driven Americana tale that provides the audience with a taste of life in Kentucky, in which the impact of the Civil War lingers on over fifteen years since the hostilities ended. Interestingly Will, Grace, and even Laura struggle to admit they love one another, because each fears that in some way will lessen their feelings towards the late Julie. In the case of Grace it is the secret; to Will it is his love for both sisters; finally to Laura it is what could have been. Though the action is limited, even when Julie vanishes in the storm, Jan Watson provides a strong late nineteenth century historical tale.