On Her Way Home

by Harriet Rochlin

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974134902
• ISBN13: 9780974134901
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Fithian Press
• Length: 270 Pages

Customer Reviews

A fascinating story

This fascinating story gives us a dark view of pioneer life in the form of the criminal justice system and its distructive effect on women who are caught up in it. Women do not count. Unless the woman is Frieda Goldson whose ferocious will takes her far from home to the side of her abducted and abused younger sister. When the girl is falsely jailed for murder Frieda pits herself against a primitive justice system that shows little mercy. Author Harriet Rochlin once again gives us the experience, superbly rich in the details of sight, sounds, taste and smells, of living in an earlier, harsher time. Excellent writing.

A riveting novel inspired by an actual family murder

After six difficult years in the Arizona-Sonora border outpost of Dos Cacahuates, Frieda Goldson fervently wants to move back to San Francisco. When her hotel guests invite her visiting kid sister, Ida, on a wagon tour of Arizona Frieda agrees, sure the gifted young girl will benefit. She also recommends a driver, Jed Pearson. But enroute, Pearson kills the Easterners and abducts Ida. Burdened with grief and thoroughly guilt-stricken, Frieda sets out to find her sister, make amends to the devastated parents -- a decision that eventually results in the estrangement of her own family in Dos Cacahuates. All this is further complicated with finding Ida in thrall to her captor and pregnant, a greedy sheriff, a duplicitous district attorney, to bizarre trials, and a grandstanding governor. Nevertheless, Frieda is determined to overcome all obstacles and consequences. On Her Way Home is a riveting novel inspired by an actual family murder and its extraordinary adjudication in the Arizona Territory. Author Harriet Rochlin is an extraordinary writer able to make her characters and their times come alive.

Couldn't put it down

There is a little bit of everything in this book -- suspense, history, a real flavor for the old west, personal conflict, resolution, and growth, and, best of all, a great story.This was one of those books that keeps you turning pages and awake later that you had intended - so you pay for it the next day at work, but it's worth it.The only problem I have (and a previous reviewer alluded to this) is that this is the THIRD book in a trilogy. I want more! How will Frieda and Bennie's lives turn out. How about their kids? And what of Ida? Has she become a desert dweller or will she return to San Francisco and become a city girl or a slave to the bording house and her oppressive father? Well?? Please write on!

Wish for a fourth in the trilogy

This is such a charming, insightful adventure story that I wish Rochlin would give us a fourth novel about Frieda and the rugged Arizona town of Dos Cacahuates. I loved the excerpts from "Grief on the Road", the type of self-help book that, although wildly humorous by today's standards, sustained many a woman in the wild, wild west.

A Page Turner

This book is about life in the West in the mid-nineteenth century and about some of the Jewish families who shared the joys and hardships of the time. I found the book both contemporary and historically believable. The characters were very well-defined, and acted consistently throughout. Turns in the plot were surprising and kept me on edge until the end of the book. Kidnapping, a chase, a trial, were all interesting, but the question of how far one goes to survive was even more interesting. It seems to me that the balance between history and the role of the Jewish settlers is perfect in the story that Rochlin is telling. They were settlers who happened to be Jews, and they were part of the early history of our nation.