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The Shinnery: A Novel
Reading the West Longlist for Debut Fiction
Seventeen-year-old Jessa Campbell thrives on the Shinnery, her family’s homestead in 1890s Texas, bordered by acres of shin oaks on the rolling plains. Without explanation her father sends her away to settle a family debt. A better judge of cattle than of men, Jessa becomes entangled with a bad one. Everything unravels after she puts her trust in Will Keyes. When Jessa returns home to the Shinnery, pregnant and alone, her father goes on a mission of frontier justice, with devastating consequences. In the aftermath Jessa fights for her claim to the family farm and for a life of independence for herself and her sisters. A story of coming-of-age, betrayal, and revenge, The Shinnery is inspired by the author’s family history and a trial that shook the region.
Seventeen-year-old Jessa Campbell thrives on the Shinnery, her family’s homestead in 1890s Texas, bordered by acres of shin oaks on the rolling plains. Without explanation her father sends her away to settle a family debt. A better judge of cattle than of men, Jessa becomes entangled with a bad one. Everything unravels after she puts her trust in Will Keyes. When Jessa returns home to the Shinnery, pregnant and alone, her father goes on a mission of frontier justice, with devastating consequences. In the aftermath Jessa fights for her claim to the family farm and for a life of independence for herself and her sisters. A story of coming-of-age, betrayal, and revenge, The Shinnery is inspired by the author’s family history and a trial that shook the region.
268 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 20, 2023
I loved this book! The author is very skilled at description and emotional connections. The themes of family, loyalty, friendship, naivety, nature, family history are so beautifully entwined in the story. Our book club read this. Tonight is our meeting and I'm excited. We get to speak with the author!
October 24, 2022
Seventeen year old Jessa Campbell lives in the Shinnery in Texas, a belt of prairie and scrub oak. She loves helping her father with the stock and farming and has no desire to ever leave and loves helping her father on the farm. Her father has a debt he is unable to pay in town, so he arranges for her to become a mother’s helper to a local storekeeper’s family.
Bitterly homesick and unfamiliar with town ways, Jessa is clumsy and constantly reprimanded by the Martin family. The silver lining is the handsome piano player who shows up once a week to teach piano lessons to her little charges. His eyes twinkle and dimples flash at Jessa who finds herself falling for him despite the fact he plays in a saloon at night. She soon begins slipping out to meet him, stifling her inner voice about his unsuitability.
Used cruelly, abandoned, and pregnant, Jessa finds herself in a tangle of problems. Her only recourse is to go back to the Shinnery where she hopes her family will take her back.
Based on a true family story, The Shinnery is extremely well written. Jessa is a sympathetic character and I found myself tense with anxiety as she made one misjudgment after another. At one point, I didn’t know if I could bear to finish because I hurt so for Jessa. Trouble compounds and her foolish actions impact her entire family. However, Jessa perseveres and the story ends with hope.
Highly recommended. I think this would be a good discussion book for young adults because it shows how victims were punished not that long ago in history and how consequences for selfish acts can affect many people we love.
Bitterly homesick and unfamiliar with town ways, Jessa is clumsy and constantly reprimanded by the Martin family. The silver lining is the handsome piano player who shows up once a week to teach piano lessons to her little charges. His eyes twinkle and dimples flash at Jessa who finds herself falling for him despite the fact he plays in a saloon at night. She soon begins slipping out to meet him, stifling her inner voice about his unsuitability.
Used cruelly, abandoned, and pregnant, Jessa finds herself in a tangle of problems. Her only recourse is to go back to the Shinnery where she hopes her family will take her back.
Based on a true family story, The Shinnery is extremely well written. Jessa is a sympathetic character and I found myself tense with anxiety as she made one misjudgment after another. At one point, I didn’t know if I could bear to finish because I hurt so for Jessa. Trouble compounds and her foolish actions impact her entire family. However, Jessa perseveres and the story ends with hope.
Highly recommended. I think this would be a good discussion book for young adults because it shows how victims were punished not that long ago in history and how consequences for selfish acts can affect many people we love.
October 25, 2022
Loved the writing of this author. I felt I was part of this book, the setting, the family/friends. So many life lessons, and lessons of forgiveness. There were some tough parts of the story to read or accept that people can be so vile, but it was reality…especially in the time period and environment this book is set. I definitely will recommend this book.
September 7, 2022
Excellent novel, couldn't put it down! It's the story of a young woman hired out by her father to a local family and the terrible trouble she encounters in the burgeoning Texas town in the late 1800's. It's based on a true story and ends with a murder trial. You can't go wrong with this one!
September 25, 2022
Jessa plans to be “the daughter who stays” in Kate Anger’s beautifully rendered debut novel, The Shinnery, set in the 1890’s on a Texas prairie. Jessa lives living on her family’s ranch which is called The Shinnery. It gives her a peaceful feeling knowing that “in spring, they will calve and plant, in summer, harvest and preserve, in fall plan and repair, and in winter prune and make do.”
Her father has other plans though and indentures her into servitude for a town family to pay off a debt.
Loyal, big-hearted, naïve and homesick, Jessa is unprepared for the treachery and betrayal she encounters in town.
“Who watches out for you?” her sister Nellie asks, when Jessa comes home for a visit. No one Jessa can trust is watching out for her, but she’s a resilient, resourceful and determined character who eventually finds her own agency.
I found her story devastating and uplifting and could not put it down. When I finished, I started reading again to savor the wonderful details of time and place. Bravo!
Her father has other plans though and indentures her into servitude for a town family to pay off a debt.
Loyal, big-hearted, naïve and homesick, Jessa is unprepared for the treachery and betrayal she encounters in town.
“Who watches out for you?” her sister Nellie asks, when Jessa comes home for a visit. No one Jessa can trust is watching out for her, but she’s a resilient, resourceful and determined character who eventually finds her own agency.
I found her story devastating and uplifting and could not put it down. When I finished, I started reading again to savor the wonderful details of time and place. Bravo!
September 6, 2022
Anger captures the inner life of Jessa Campbell with vivid tenderness as Jessa is sent from her beloved home to work off a debt she knows nothing about. As a girl with a loyal and loving heart she is baffled by the arrangement her father has made. Later, she is undone when another man is reckless with her affections and trusting nature.
All of this unfolds in the wilds of the 1890's Texas prairie summoned with beautiful and atmospheric specificity. Jessa's deep feelings reminded me of my seventeen-year-old self in a way I'd almost forgotten, a way that felt so authentic as to make me ache. Because of this skillful rendering her confusions and betrayal(s) hit with visceral force. Her shame and helplessness left me feeling ill. Her resilience and agency gave me hope.
All of this unfolds in the wilds of the 1890's Texas prairie summoned with beautiful and atmospheric specificity. Jessa's deep feelings reminded me of my seventeen-year-old self in a way I'd almost forgotten, a way that felt so authentic as to make me ache. Because of this skillful rendering her confusions and betrayal(s) hit with visceral force. Her shame and helplessness left me feeling ill. Her resilience and agency gave me hope.
August 26, 2022
A mesmerizing read both for the story and the excellent writing itself! The story is so engaging that I simply couldn't put it down until I finished. The author is excellent at portraying both her characters and her setting. I could see everything clearly in my mind and I felt like I was right there, experiencing it myself. This is the kind of book I'd use in a literature or a history class because I would be confident that my students would totally engage with the subject matter and I know it would provoke all kinds of discussion. It's right up there with To Kill A Mockingbird. I can't wait to read what the author writes next. I hope this will gain wide readership.
Thank you to Netgalley for an advance copy of this book. It's a total keeper!
Thank you to Netgalley for an advance copy of this book. It's a total keeper!
March 20, 2023
This is a book I had a difficult time putting down, it was that good. The author got me that involved with the characters. Plus all that lovely detail about East Texas flora and fauna at just the right places to put the reader right there. Most important was that this one grabbed my emotions, all of them. That's what I want from a story. I want to feel it, to feel the characters and be where they are in history. This is a tale of a naive girl and her hero daddy who were done wrong by two unscrupulous cads. Ha! The Shinnery shows what a simple premise can become in the hands of a superb story teller. Read it and find out for yourself.
September 29, 2023
Simply excellent. It's a brutal read, about a brutal time and place...especially for women. But it reminds me somewhat of Thomas Harding's novels in this way. As an author he was always particularly hard on his female protagonists, but no harder than the environment in which they lived was for women.
But it's also a love song to that part of the prairie just north of Abilene, Texas. Seen through Jessa's eyes, it's a starkly beautiful place...as beautiful and as strong as Jessa herself.
If you like Western Fiction and are ok with facing the sometimes ugliness of that late 19th century world, this is a fantastic book.
But it's also a love song to that part of the prairie just north of Abilene, Texas. Seen through Jessa's eyes, it's a starkly beautiful place...as beautiful and as strong as Jessa herself.
If you like Western Fiction and are ok with facing the sometimes ugliness of that late 19th century world, this is a fantastic book.
March 23, 2025
This is not a book I would have ever picked to read, but it was a book club pick, and I am grateful for that. I enjoy bookclubs because I do read books I would never have picked myself, sometimes that is bad, sometimes as with this book, it is good.
Based on a true story, the book takes place in 1895 and 96 in hardscarabble north Texas. The Campbell's live on a farm, the father a Confederate veteran.
Life is hard, and when he is in debt to the store, his daughter becomes an indentured servant to the store owner.
Jessa is an innocent young girl and when she becomes enamored of the piano teacher, bad things happen. This is her story, a tough one that will have you sobbing by the end.
Based on a true story, the book takes place in 1895 and 96 in hardscarabble north Texas. The Campbell's live on a farm, the father a Confederate veteran.
Life is hard, and when he is in debt to the store, his daughter becomes an indentured servant to the store owner.
Jessa is an innocent young girl and when she becomes enamored of the piano teacher, bad things happen. This is her story, a tough one that will have you sobbing by the end.
August 18, 2022
Kate Anger's "The Shinnery" has a heroine who will grab you in the first few pages and never let you go. Jessa Campbell's story is enthralling, and I found it impossible to put the book down once I dipped into it. Anger's meticulous historical detail and command of 19th century vernacular never get in the way of the story; indeed, they just pull you into the 1890s and make you feel that you live there. The narrative flows without a bump or awkward moment. Anger's storytelling skills are fully on display, making this the most enjoyable historical novel I've read in a very long time.
March 13, 2023
The story is based on real life events in the family of the author. Many in the family were not aware of the "shameful" events. The story develops so that you come to know each character and their traits, "good" and "bad". The story of a family circling the wagons to protect their own. I had the privilege of attending a book talk with the author at a recent book club meeting. The "back stories" only made me appreciate and the story and the history of the time the story is based in. I would highly recommend the title and am looking forward to future titles by Kate Anger
October 16, 2022
I loved this determined and heartfelt book of what life must have been like for a young woman in rural Texas during the late 1800s. Kate Anger conjures up an intense family story with lively colloquialisms and vivid prairie metaphors. A story of immense hardships and also the courage to overcome them with self-determination and the eternal love of family and friends. This is an engaging tale of women’s struggles on the frontier that brings relevancy to all eras.
November 30, 2022
Jessa is a teenage girl who thrives on helping run the family homestead on the Texas frontier. But one day, against her wishes, she is sent away by her father to pay off a family debt. Out of her element as a mother’s helper to a well-to-do family, she meets a boy who makes her feel wanted and loved for the first time. She tumbles into this relationship and finds herself betrayed in the worst way, again as a pawn to pay off someone else’s debt. Her story is shocking and humiliating but she must confront the reality and make it right, even if it brings her whole family down with her. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year.
September 22, 2022
A wonderful story of innocence lost and bravery found.
These characters come alive, and some stay with the reader.
These characters come alive, and some stay with the reader.
December 27, 2022
Excellent! It really was a heartbreaking storyline but ended well. I recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction focused on the American West.
December 28, 2022
Jessa just frustrated me. So many bad decisions and those choices affected everyone. Vile actions and no communication between anyone.
Well written but the characters-ugh!
Well written but the characters-ugh!
March 19, 2023
The first half of the book is a difficult subject matter. The story did not resonate with me. I was disappointed because several friends really liked this book. Darn!!
April 29, 2023
Book started out good but then it started going downhill. Don't want to share spoilers. Let's say it's not worth the read.
March 9, 2023
Captivating, raw, honest, compelling. The lead protagonist makes one frustratingly innocent mistake, but her growth from a painfully naive southern girl to an independent woman is truly heartening.
December 26, 2022
Little House on the Prairie meets real life.
December 22, 2022
A great story told in the time period and vernacular of the era. Its hard not reading this with a southern accent in your mind. Jessa is a great character to admire and route for.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews