Pamela E. KlassenCritiques

Klassen's writing is fast-paced and solidly factual while also evocative and aesthetically beautiful. It is a really engaging story, both in terms of character and setting. She does a great job of bringing history into focus and of attending to underlying issues.

I was extremely disappointed in this book. I was by no means the "story" I was expecting. If you take out the pages where Klassen tells the reader what she is _going_ to tell them, along with the pages of _what_ she wrote, you are left with mostly more pages if _why_ they were important. In the end there was about 20 minutes of narrative.

Okay, I get it: this is supposed to be an academic book. But it turns out to be more of a feminist apology for writing these two women's stories. I am currently reading a religious history tome by Wendy Donniger. It has none of Klassen's drawbacks. Perhaps Klassen should have written for a scholarly journal instead of attempting to stretch this out into a book.