Until June
By Barbara Britton
June 2020
Pelican Book Group
266 pp
Historical Romantic Fiction, Americana
Alaska
$5.99 Ebook
$15.99
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About the book
When seventeen-year-old seamstress, Josephine Nimetz, agrees
to take care of a WWI amputee in a remote Alaskan lodge, there's enough
friction to melt the Mendenhall Glacier. Her position is only until June, and
it pays well enough to overlook the hardship of managing a rustic home and a
shell-shocked veteran.
Geoff Chambers makes it clear that he isn't too fond of the “runt” sent to take
care of his needs, nor of her painful mistakes. Dealing with a depressed and
addicted veteran, pushes Josephine to the brink of leaving, if not for the
money her salary brings.
But Josephine is a perfectionist, determined to get Geoff back on his
feet—figuratively...Although, sending a rich, handsome veteran back into
society may cost Josephine the man she has grown to love.
My review
When a proper young Alaskan miss and a wounded and bitter
WWI veteran are bound together by need, romance isn’t the first order of
business.
Too determined to get Geoff on his feet, albeit wooden, once
Jo finds the amputee’s wooden legs hidden in a closet, Jo forgoes dignity and
gossip as they spend time together at an island lodge off the cost of Juneau,
Alaska in 1918 and 1919. Birthdays and holidays pass over the course of nine
months as Josephine turns to nurse and helpmeet from her work as a seamstress
to help provide for her family after her stepfather is brutally murdered. The
murder case remains open, and anxiety over the potential perpetrator keeps the
sense of suspense present under the main theme of the story.
When most girls are completing high school, Josephine is
stuck on a deserted island with a grumpy young man addicted to drugs. Worse
yet, he’s trigger-happy, calls her a runt, and forces her to sin—by playing
card games with him. When he calls her out on romantic stories she reads in a
women’s magazine and dares her to enter a writing contest, Jo slowly amends her
initial impressions of the soulful Geoff.
Scarcely older than Jo, Geoff had enlisted in army only to
be wounded dreadfully early on. With his bad attitude, his prognosis is grim,
and he’s sent away to recover or die in a secluded place where he won’t bother
his stepmother and younger half-brother. But Geoff surprises everyone,
including himself, when he realizes his life is far from over.
Told through our young heroine’s eyes, Britton has created
an earthy and heartwarming romance filled with down-to-earth characters.
Frankness and realism pepper this journey of healing from the inside out.
Britton’s fans won’t find much of a leap from Biblical Israel to historical
territorial America as her latest tale unfolds with her usual storytelling
aplomb.
About the Author
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