Yet because of Park’s empathy, understanding of the complexity of the coming together of cultures, and wonderful ability to create memorable characters, the readers of her story will see that time and place in an entirely different, more complex, and more realistic way. It’s a vivid picture of a setting, Dakota Territory, and a period, the 1880s, which has been the focus of countless westerns. Rather than picturing the hard struggle to settle a “frontier,” the book deals with relations between people of many backgrounds-European American, Native American and Asian American-as seen through the eyes of her beautifully realized main character, whose mixed ancestry never holds her back. However, quite unlike Wilder’s books, her non-European characters are neither stereotypes nor peripheral to the story. Acclaimed, award-winning author Linda Sue Park has placed a young half-Asian girl, Hanna, in a small town in America’s. It deals with a theme-the development of the West- familiar to fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Prairie Lotus is a powerful, touching, multilayered book about a girl determined to fit in and realize her dreams: getting an education, becoming a dressmaker in her father’s shop, and making at least one friend.

If anything, this may be her most ambitious and best book yet.

Even when dealing with truly sensitive subject matter, she always manages to bring out the basic humanity in her characters in ways that make her work accessible to readers of all ages. “I have always admired the subtle power and gentle clarity of Linda Sue Park’s writing.

Prairie lotus book