Waiting on Wednesday: The Springsweet

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight books we can't wait for.

The Springsweet (The Vespertine #2)

by Saundra Mitchell

17 April 2012

The GoodReads summary:
It’s a long way from Baltimore to Oklahoma Territory. But Zora Stewart will go any distance to put the tragic events of her sixteenth summer behind her. So this city girl heads to the tiny frontier town of West Glory to help her young widowed aunt keep her homestead going.

When another Baltimorean shows up in West Glory, Zora couldn’t be more surprised. Theo de la Croix made the long trip out west hoping to court Zora, whom he has long admired from afar.

But Zora has developed an attraction to a rather less respectable fellow: Emerson Birch, a rough-mannered young "sooner" whose fertile land is coveted.

As Zora begins to suspect that there may be more than luck behind Emerson’s good land, she discovers an extraordinary, astonishing power of her own: the ability to sense water under the parched earth. When her aunt hires her out as a "springsweet" to advise other settlers where to dig their wells, Zora feels the burden of holding the key to something so essential to survival in this unforgiving land.

Even more, she finds herself longing for love the way the prairie thirsts for water. Maybe, in the wildness of the territories, Zora can finally move beyond simply surviving and start living.

A) I'm so in love with this cover! B) This book sounds so ridiculously fantastic. This is only the second YA novel I've seen set in the old west (with the other being "13th Child," by Patricia C. Wrede), and I love westerns, so the setting's definitely working in this book's favor. Plus it's got some magic going on, which only makes me want to read it more. I haven't actually read "The Vespertine" yet, but as far as I can tell, this book has different main characters. So hopefully if I don't get around to reading "The Vespertine" before this one comes out, I'll still be fine.

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