Finished: A Daughter of the Land (Stratton-Porter) A fine, old book that belonged to my great-grandmother. It reminded me very much of a grown-up version of the Little House on the Prairie books with it's wholesome values and lesson-learning events. It tells the story of 18 year old Katherine "Kate" Bates, the youngest daughter of sixteen children, of a hardworking farming family in the late 1800's. All their lives the Bates children work the farm so that when each son reaches the age of 21 his father gives him 200 acres of the huge farm to go and get a bride and build a home of his own. Even the daughters work towards this goal, because being women, they won't need land of their own when they get married. (ugh) Instead, when the daughters turn 18 they are sent to Normal School, which is a weeks long program in the summer to teach them to become teachers. Kate, of course, is very headstrong and would love her own 200 acres. However, she's resigned to the way of the family and is at least excited to go and learn to become a teacher. Shockingly, her parents have other ideas. Since Kate is the youngest, they expect her to stay on at the farm indefinitely, continuing to help her mother run the house and do her share of the farming as well. Kate is understandably upset when her parents refuse all reason and begging. Kate takes matters into her own hands and goes to her oldest brother for a loan of the money required to go. Adam doesn't want to buck his father, but his feisty wife, the only sister-in-law worth a darn, gives her the money to go! And so Kate begins her life of adventures, including falling in love, spurning the love because he's illiterate and rich, refusing her father's job suggestion and therefore being banned from the family home forever, marrying a man who doesn't love her, having a set of twins, finally getting her "share" of her father's inheritance when he dies, investing all her money in a sawmill that is about to open and be profitable when her drunkard husband accidentally burns the whole thing down and dies in the process, raising her twins in near poverty, finally going back home to help her mother where she and her children both thrive on the farm, etc. etc. It was a good book that kept me reading...not really deep, but good enough. Oh, and Kate finally got land all her own when her mother died and left her and only her the original acreage of the homestead! No matter what, it was very surreal reading a book that my great-grandmother, and probably my grandmother, held in their very own hands!