The Memory Weaver – A Novel: A Novel

by Jane Kirkpatrick

Eliza Spalding Warren was just a child when she was taken hostage by the Cayuse Indians during a massacre in 1847. Now the young mother of two children, Eliza faces a different kind of dislocation; her impulsive husband wants them to make a new start in another territory, which will mean leaving her beloved home and her departed mother's grave--and returning to the land of her captivity. Eliza longs to know how her mother, an early missionary to the Nez Perce Indians, dealt with the challenges of life with a sometimes difficult husband and with her daughter's captivity.

When Eliza is finally given her mother's diary, she is stunned to find that her own memories are not necessarily the whole story of what happened. Can she lay the dark past to rest and move on? Or will her childhood memories always hold her hostage?

Based on true events, The Memory Weaver is New York Times bestselling author Jane Kirkpatrick's latest literary journey into the past, where threads of western landscapes, family, and faith weave a tapestry of hope inside every pioneering woman's heart. Readers will find themselves swept up in this emotional story of the memories that entangle us and the healing that awaits us when we bravely unravel the threads of the past.

• ISBN10: 0800722329
• ISBN13: 9780800722326
• Publish Date: 1 September 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Imprint: Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 350
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

3.5
" Some of what I remembered was not my own story. It was twisted like tobacco strands, tangled with a dozen other memories of people who were here and others who were not even a part of the terror."

Both Eliza and her mother were very strong women and you can tell that throughout the whole story.
While we never actually get to see Eliza interact with her mother besides in memories due to very unfortunate events you do get to know her through diary entries throughout the novel.

Eliza was just 10 years old when she was held captive by Cayuse Indians and forced to be a translator. Because of that she feels very burdened and like she never did enough for her fellow captives to keep them safe. You can tell very early on she deals with PTSD and because of that she likes to control as much of her life as possible. Which causes a lot of things in her life to be very difficult including her marriage to her husband and her relationship with her father and other siblings at times. But as the story goes on she slowly realizes that she can't control it all and once she doesn't control so much of her life her relationships get better and she herself is happier. But she still feels responsible and holds a lot of anger because of the things she endured. As she gets older and slowly starts to build a better relationship with her father she learns that things she thought had happened in that horrible period of her life didn't happen like she thought and because of that she had been holding grudges against certain people. Once she finally got to see her mothers diary entries and talked to her father about what happened she realized that a lot of what she thought wasn't true or weren't even her memories and instead were memories of the people she had been around and due to her age she had gotten certain things mixed up.

This doesn't get rid of her PTSD or her need to control certain things in her life, it does help her come to terms with what happened and that she has to move on with her life, and that she can't always use that as an excuse.
I did struggle with parts of this book because it did take awhile to get to where Eliza realized she was making poor decisions and she needed to stop being so stubborn about everything all the time and to talk it out with the people she cared about.
This book was very interesting to me though and I loved getting to see more about how people did live in harmony with the Indians and that some were really asked to be there.
If the rest of Kirkpatrick novels are anything like this one then, I can't wait to read them.

According to the Epilogue this book is based off of real events that took place and were recorded thanks to Diary entries of the family and surrounding community.

"That everything that happens can be converted to good. We simply do not know the good of it, our world being so vast and wide and us but a small part in it."

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

See reviews first on my blog