book details

Book: Harbored Secrets by Marie F. Martin

categories: Book, Montana, Prairies, Coming of Age, Fiction, Homesteads, Rural Living, Family, Love, Forgivness, Keeping Secrets, Mental Illness, Building a Home, Psychological Mystery

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Marie F. Martin

about this book: I grew up in the bowl of a valley surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. It is lush and majestic. My parents were raised on the northern plains of Montana. Times were hard for homesteaders and their children. My mother married the hired hand and they moved for greener pastures in the Flathead valley. Once a year they'd load their five kids in their old cars and make the trip across the mountains to the high-line to visit the ranches. I loved the prairies and their beauty. Tough and fertile. I listened to the tales of my uncles and aunts growing up in the vast area. My father never left the ranch until he was 12, and that was just to go to a small grain elevator town along the Great Northern Railroad tracks.

I also heard Mom's story of how her baby brother was burned to death when the homestead shanty caught fire. Somehow I knew buried inside these family tales was a story for me to write.

Harbored Secrets is based on that heritage. Readers who love a story with depth of character and mystery will like this story.

Amazon reviewer, Yvonne Bechtold wrote: By the end of the very first paragraph, I knew Marie F. Martin had written a book I would have a hard time putting down. In between high drama, there is a love letter to Montana. Ms. Bechtold is right about how the prairie grabs hold and doesn't let go. It rides deep in your soul. I didn't know that until I wrote the story.

Imagine life isolated in the plains and your house burns, baby brother dies and you blame yourself for it. How does a six year-old handle that? What demons will haunt her as an adult. Blinny Platt knows. Her story is a work of fiction based on a few events of my mother's early childhood.