BOOK REVIEW: Looking For Jane

LOOKING FOR JANE, the most recent novel by Judith Redline Coopey, has just been released and it definitely lives up to her earlier works.

The year is 1890; the place is Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Fifteen-year-old Nell had been left on the doorstep of an orphanage as an infant. Nell was born with a cleft palate and has spent her fifteen years being teased by the local “mean boys” for her ugly looks and odd speech.

The nuns have decided to put her in service with one of the local farmers, but Nell is not impressed with the man or his beaten-down looking wife. Stealing a boat from the meanest of the gang of town boys, she heads down the river. By chance she finds a dime novel about the brave and wonderful Calamity Jane. Nell thinks that she has enough evidence to prove that Calamity Jane is her true mother, so she heads for Deadwood to meet this brave and noble person and be reunited with her family.

From this point Nell, and the reader, go on a ride across the central part of the United States, through the Badlands, and eventually to Deadwood, South Dakota. Along the way Nell is adopted by Soot, a large, lovable, mutt and Jeremy Chatterfield, a handsome Englishman whose ways of getting funds gets them into some potentially dangerous situations.

I was in love with Nell from the first paragraph. She has been put down by the nuns who raised her, teased by the locals, and has been very much on her own. Yet, she is courageous, patient, stubborn, kind, and ready to fight when she feels the need to protect herself or those she loves.

Her innocence mixed with a sense of practicability give a warm humor to the book. Ms. Coopey has a knack for finding the perfect voice for her characters. As I have often said, I read for characters first and then for plot. LOOKING FOR JANE is rich in both.

I would not admit this to anyone but my closest friends, but I finished the book, turned to tell my husband about it and could not speak. Nell had become so real to me that I had problems letting her go at the final chapter. If you have not discovered Judy Coopey and her strong women characters, try Redfern Farm a story of the Underground Railroad in Western Pennsylvania, or Waterproof, a novel after the Johnstown flood. You will thank me for introducing you to Nell and the others.