I finished this book a week ago and still can’t quit thinking about Sarah and her family. Nancy Turner has created characters so real I feel like I know them personally and am sad we won’t be seeing them again. This series has been one of my all time favorites.

When we first met the young heroine, Sarah Agnes Prine, in the award-winning bestseller THESE IS MY WORDS, she rode right into our hearts. This indomitable, unschooled, almost illiterate teenager with a zest for life and a zeal for learning epitomized the spirit that embodied the frontier women of the late 19th century. Sarah’s early life was based on memoirs of the author’s great grandmother who came to the Arizona Territory in the early 1880s, the West’s most exciting era. As Sarah grew to adulthood, married and started a family, we shared each event through her journals. A sequel, SARAH’S QUILT, continued the saga, and now we are treated in THE STAR GARDEN to Sarah in her prime as she keeps a detailed journal of the events that shape the times and her family’s life. It is now 1907 and the 20th century has brought the Wells Fargo’s famed Butterfield Stage Line, newspapers, telegraph and mail, and the automobile to the Arizona Territory. The famed Butterfield route crosses through Sarah’s hard-won property, and it is that coveted right of way that her powerful neighbor and nemesis, Senor Maldonado, tries to claim as the railroad schemes with other large landowners to acquire land in any method they can devise to build the railway. Sarah, her mother and her nearest neighbor, Udell Hanna, hold title to key segments of land in the way of the railroad in a time when land ownership was easy to claim but sometimes difficult to hold. As the twice-widowed mother of two young men, Sarah has earned the notches on her belt from the range and Indian wars, and has surmounted every obstacle that the harsh Arizona desert, wild land fires, Apaches and cattle rustlers can throw at her. Her friend and neighbor, Udell, has progressed from adoration from afar to courting, but Sarah is not so certain that a third marriage is in her future. Meanwhile, her eldest son Charlie, returning from a year away with the Arizona Rangers, brings home a bride — Sarah’s arch enemy’s daughter, whom her father had sequestered in a Tucson convent. Between the railroad and the unthinkable match between young lovers from warring families, a smoldering fuse is relit. Through diligent research of one of the West’s most exciting eras and with a rich family history to rely on, Nancy E. Turner has created another page-turning historical family saga. Sarah Agnes Prine is truly among the fictional heroines of the Old West. — Reviewed by Roz Shea

This third book of the Prine/Elliott saga begins just as the second book ended, in 1906 Arizona Territory. . . Forty-three-year-old widow Sarah Agnes Prine Elliott has just survived one of the most difficult years of her life. Her longtime friend and neighbor Rudolfo Maldonado has just tried to get back into her good graces after being discovered attempting to sabotage Sarah’s ranch, but she still doesn’t believe he’s really sorry. Sarah’s brother Harland, recently widowed with four small children, has come to stay on the ranch until he’s able to get on his feet again. The entire extended family is still in mourning over the murder of Sarah’s niece Esther, while all the young adults of the Prine and Elliott families are trying small steps toward independence. Likewise, new neighbor Udell Hanna, who first indicated a romantic interest in Sarah in the second book, returns with an invigorated desire to win her heart. Part of her feels attracted to this hardworking, plainspoken man; another is guilty to move from the memory of her husband Jack. As usual, life for the clan is interrupted by a number of factors, including a serious bout of influenza that seriously jeopardizes lives — and Charlie’s return with a bride whose very presence on the family ranch spells trouble for the family. Still, there’s little doubt they’ll make it through — largely due to Sarah’s inner strength, which readers have been able to follow since her teenage years in “This is My Words. “ Well-written and beautifully characterized, the story of Sarah, her family and friends is bound to keep readers immersed. Turner skillfully combines research on early 20th century Western living with thoughts, feelings and ideas that are common to all human beings in any era.