Written with elegance, imagination, and historical savvy

Pat Laster's A Journey of Choice grabbed me from the beginning and drew me into the life and travails of Liddy Underhill Sandy Raschke, Fiction Editor, Calliope, A Writer's Workshop by Mail.

In 1932, young Liddy Underhill, just graduated from high school, lands a reporter's job in an adjacent town and hitches a ride with a peddler who lives there. From the first night of her journey throughout the next decade, Liddy is beset with challenges. She marries and begins a life with her husband, Heth. When tragedy changes the course of her life, though, Liddy must find a way to reclaim her life and find happiness.

Along the way, she becomes the victim of a womanizer, a controlling doctor, and an arsonist. She suffers abandonment and an emotional breakdown. Set in the Missouri Ozarks of the 1930s, A Journey of Choice tells the riveting tale of an enterprising young woman dealing with events beyond her control and the message of hope that emerges from her story.