A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon, 1845

This title is the winner of the 2004 Stevens Literary Prize. 'West. The sound of a wish in a single word.' That's how seventeen-year-old Lovisa King put it that spring of 1845 as she set off with her parents, eleven of her siblings, and their assorted spouses and children for Oregon Country, the promised land. From the opening lines, the reader is immersed in the excitement, challenges, exhaustion and elation, triumphs and tragedies of the journey, as an oft-told tale takes on a new freshness, seen through the eyes and the heart of this gritty young woman.Lovisa King is a flesh-and-blood teenager - feisty, funny, and wise beyond her years. With the crossing as catalyst, we watch her mature from a headstrong girl to a young woman beginning her adult life in the Kings Valley of western Oregon, a goal attained only through the harshest of sacrifices. The importance of this novel's historical terrain - the Oregon Trail - cannot be disputed. Neither can the importance of its human terrain - loss of innocence, alteration of long-held attitudes toward 'the other,' emerging concepts of love and family. Based on the life of a real Oregon pioneer, this is history delivered in a dramatic, personal, and gripping way.