Oh, how I wanted to love this. O'Donnell tells the story of Sarah Ellen Gibson, or Nellie as she prefers, through a series of poems told from the perspective of Nellie and those around her. The poems are broken up into three parts: Nellie and her husband being separated while he searches for his fortune, Nellie and their two sons joining her husband and toughing it out in Alaska, and Nellie abandoning her family to move to Fairbanks with the man she loves. The poems are backed by research which really was the most compelling part.

This collection is part poetry and part historical fiction and unfortunately didn't fully satisfy me on either front.

My expectations of poetry may be too high--I like it to be chock full of meaning, transcendent. Even for ordinary events. Poetry should make the ordinary extraordinary. These poems occasionally got there for me, but usually the significance of the events seemed to be lost rather than enhanced by the medium.

As far as the historical fiction side goes, I needed more. I wanted to delve even further into Nellie's life: the decisions she made and why she made them. Or if I couldn't get the why (and this goes back to the poetry thing), I wanted to feel what she felt.

Maybe O'Donnell tried to do too much in too few pages. Maybe I was too excited to read this. Although I gave Steam Laundry only three stars, it almost got there for me, and I will absolutely read whatever O'Donnell puts out next. It's a good first work, and I bet her second will be even better. ( )