“The Pain and the Sorrow”: Historic Fiction at its Best

The Pain and the Sorrow is a western which takes a true historic tale and crafts the details to the in a way that makes Loretta Miles Tollefson’s rendering not only plausible, but probable. Her background as a journalist is evident in every historic detail included, and in the Author’s Note at the end, she offers up the discrepancies in the reported facts and her reasoning for the choices made as she crafted the details into this heart wrenching New Mexico legend to make it come alive. It gripped me and I didn’t want to put it down. I couldn’t wait for the story to unfold.

From the view point of a young New Mexican girl, the story takes on a feeling of sadness in addition to the unbelievable horror of the originally reported events. Charles Kennedy offered food and lodging to weary travelers in the mountains of New Mexico for a price, but Charles had a temper and a lust for money, and those who stopped there didn’t always leave. Charles was an old west version of a serial killer. So claimed his young wife, Gregoria, when she appeared in a saloon in Etown one night after walking ten miles in the bitter cold to get away from her abusive husband.

A western with a female perspective, attention to the historic details, a story that compels me to keep the pages turning and characters that make me care. What more could this reader want? I give The Pain and the Sorrow five quills.

Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs at no charge. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.