PIONEER GIRL

Narrator Bernadette Dunne delivers this first-person story featuring Lee Lien, a recent Ph.D. graduate in literature whose academic future is in limbo. The novel reads like a memoir, and Dunne's straightforward delivery is a good match for its style. Lee comes across a pin of a little house, which was left in her grandfather's cafe in Vietnam during the war by a journalist named Rose. Lee decides to try to discover if it is, indeed, the same pin Alonzo gave Laura in one of the Little House books. The author has cleverly interwoven the Ingalls's pioneer experience with the fictional Lien family's experiences finding a home in a new land, creating an interesting mix of fact, fiction, and supposition. Dunne's no-frills delivery works well. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2014]