Buffalo Flats

Starred review from February 6, 2023
A Canadian homesteader’s daughter carves out a place for her feminist dreams within her 1890s Latter-Day Saints community in this enticing historical novel based on the lived histories of the author’s ancestors, as detailed in an end note. Seventeen-year-old Rebecca Leavitt believes that God has sent her a sign when she discovers an unoccupied piece of land overlooking the Rockies. Though homesteading laws forbid her from owning property, she resolves to one day raise enough money so that her father can purchase the plot and sign it over to her. Her timeline is expedited, however, when she learns that, a year from now, the land will be sold to her childhood friend, Coby Webster. This episodic narrative, told over the course of a year, exposes complex layers in Rebecca’s history with Coby and explores women’s agency in their patriarchal community. Through deliberately paced, relationship-driven storytelling overflowing with witty humor and gritty Western imagery, Leavitt (Calvin) presents Rebecca’s faith as a tender, sometimes fraught, ever-evolving dynamic that honors those struggling to define themselves within religious traditions.
A plotline detailing a physically abusive relationship is conscientiously handled. All characters read as white. Ages 12–up. Agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown.