Unsettled by Patricia Reis Book Review!

Family Secrets. 

A genealogical quest takes Van back 100 years to the Iowa prairie in search of an ancestor no one has claimed. As Van Reinhardt clears out her father’s belongings, she comes across a request penned by her father prior to his death. 

Examining the family portrait of her German immigrant ancestors that he has left her, Van’s curiosity grows about one of the children portrayed there. 

Meanwhile, in the 1870s, Kate is a German immigrant newly arrived in America with only her brother as family. When she and her brother split, she eventually finds her way back to him, but with a secret. 

Van revisits the town and her ancestors' farm to discover calamitous events in probate records, farm auction lists, asylum records, and lurid obituaries, hinting at a history far more complex and tumultuous than she had expected. 

But the mystery remains until she changes upon a small book–sized for a pocket – that holds Tante Kate’s secret and provides the missing piece.

 Author Patricia Reis is a Midwesterner at heart. In the mid- 1800s, her German immigrant ancestors pioneered a farm in southwestern Iowa and their portrait gave her this story. She has lived on both coasts and currently resides in Portland, Maine where she is active in Maine Writers and Publishers. She spends six months of each year in Nova Scotia.

Reis holds a BA in English Literature fro

m the University of Wisconsin, an MFA from UCLA and a degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. She also main- tains a private practice of psychotherapy for women.

Reis’s memoir, Motherlines: Love, Longing, and Libera- tion (SheWrites Press, October 2016) won a gold medal for memoir from Independent Press Publishers. Along with numerous essays and reviews, she has published several non- fiction books. 

Women’s Voices includes her in-depth inter-view with naturalist and writer, Terry Tempest Williams; The Dreaming Way: Dreamwork and Art for Remembering and Recovery (recently translated into Korean, 2019)

(1995, 2005) with a forthcoming Russian translation.

My Thoughts

Unsettled by Patricia Reis is the story of one woman curious to find out more about her ancestors. Told different point of view, one is Kate, known as Tante Kate in the 1870's. Kate is a German immigrant, having come to America with her brother. The second point of view is from Val Reinhardt, and depicts her search to learn more about her family and where she came from.

This genealogical research that Van is doing is the start of her going through her father's belongings, looking for anything that will help her in her search. Her father had requested that she look into her ancestry further, so all she has to work with is an old picture of the family.

This search takes her to libraries where she searches probate records, birth and death certificates, and any other documents that will help her piece together a story. The work is time-consuming but worth it in the long run.

I think that the author did a remarkable job with the past. It is a dual timeline, which I love to read, and very descriptive in the telling of a time long gone. The characters are brought to life with all of the flaws, difficulties, and love that a family has for each other even though life at times had to have been difficult.

 Difficulties from drought and failure of the crops, the women having and losing children who died young. But from the story, I learned that even though there were tough times, it was also a happy time.

I give this book 5 stars! Well done!