Broken Ground By Karen Schreck Giveaway

When a young oil rig widow escapes her grief and the Texas Dust Bowl, she discovers a surprising future—and new passion—awaiting her in California in this lyrically written romance by the author of Sing for Me.
Newly married to her childhood sweetheart, twenty-one-year-old Ruth Warren is settling into life in a Depression-era, East Texas oil town. She’s making a home when she learns that her young husband, Charlie, has been killed in an oil rig accident. Ruth is devastated, but then gets a chance for a fresh start: a scholarship from a college in Pasadena, CA. Ruth decides to take a risk and travel west, to pursue her one remaining dream to become a teacher.

At college Ruth tries to fit into campus life, but her grief holds her back. When she spends Christmas with some old family friends, she meets the striking and compelling Thomas Everly, whose own losses and struggles have instilled in him a commitment to social justice, and led him to work with Mexican migrant farmworkers in a camp just east of Los Angeles. With Thomas, Ruth sees another side of town, and another side of current events: the numerous forced deportations without due process of Mexicans, along with United States citizens of Mexican descent.
After Ruth is forced to leave school, she goes to visit Thomas and sees that he has cobbled together a night school for the farmworkers’ children. Ruth begins to work with the children, and establishes deep friendships with people in the camp. When the camp is raided and the workers and their families are rounded up and shipped back to Mexico, Ruth and Thomas decide to take a stand for the workers’ rights—all while promising to love and cherish one another.

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http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Ground-Karen-Halvorsen-Schreck/dp/1476794839/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463485160&sr=1-1&keywords=broken+ground+karen+schreck

Karen Halvorsen Schreck is the author of three previous novels, Sing for Me, Dream Journal, and While He Was Away. She received her doctorate in English and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her short stories and articles have appeared in Literal Latté, Other Voices, Image, as well as other literary journals and magazines, and have received various awards, including a Pushcart Prize, an Illinois State Arts Council Grant, and in 2009, first prize awards for memoir and devotional magazine writing from the Evangelical Press Association. A freelance writer and frequent visiting professor of English at Wheaton College, Karen lives with her husband and two children in Wheaton, Illinois.

This was the first book I have read by Karen Schreck.

Broken Ground is a historical novel that is written with 1930 backdrop. The book has all the issues that were happening during that era. The story is written in the perspective he main character Ruth. The Schreck does a very good job showing what Ruth is thinking and feeling throughout the book. Ruth was a newlywed when tragedy occurs and she is widowed. I am a fairly newlywed myself and can't fathom how it would be picking up broken pieces and starting over. It would have been even harder in the 1930s than it would be today. Beth learns about God's grace as she faces struggles with her overbearing family that means well and the discrimination issues that take place.

I gave this book 4 stars.

I was given a copy of this book by Wynn Wynn Media for my honest review.

 

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