Prayers for Sale

I listened to Prayers for Sale while driving home for Spring Break and found myself liking this book. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. I am a quilter but I didn't really know that Dallas is also a quilter so the appearance of quilting in her book surprised me. It was fun reading and the addition of all those quilt pattern names added to the book, as I found myself smiling when I was familiar with one. It was good to read about quilting and quilts in a book where their appearance wasn't contrived and trite. The quilting bees were also familiar as I have participated in more than one of those since I was a young child.

The other part of this book I liked was the setting. I am familiar with the Gold Camp area of Colorado, especially around show more Leadville, and so found the story interesting in a geographical and historical way as well. There was much in this book about gold mining and about the Depression era in that industry. The inclusion of brothels in the fabric of the community was also done well. This was a nice picture of an isolated mining community and of small town life that I enjoyed listening to. show less

The way that Sandra Dallas captures a place and time just warms me. This book is full of colloquialisms and wonderful stories and life lived with hope and with pragmatism. Ms. Dallas creates women who are so appealing - strong, tender, wise, certainly not perfect - but nonetheless women you'd want as friends. Living in the Denver area I found this novel particularly appealing, dealing as it does with the mining that was so much a part of the early years of Colorado statehood. Another thing about this novel - Ms. Dallas returns again and again to quilting and her novels are beginning to resemble those quilts - bits and pieces of her other novels show up in each other - just like the pieces of fabric that women pass around and share.

Eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort is starting to feel old. She knows it is time to start spending at least the winter months at her daughter’s home in the milder climate of Fort Madison, Iowa, rather than in her own home high in the Rockies where she has spent most of the last seventy winters. Middle Swan, Colorado, is a gold mining town and, considering the depth of the Depression, its residents are happy to have the steady work, dangerous though that work might be.

Hennie is wise enough to know that once she settles in Iowa she might have neither the health nor the energy needed to return to the Colorado high country. She finds the possibility that her new, more static, lifestyle might speed her aging process, or stifle her will to show more remain active, to be a depressing one because she is not ready to say “deep enough” to Middle Swan. It is the unexpected appearance of seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, who hopes to start a new life with her young husband in Middle Swan, that gives Hennie a new sense of purpose as she prepares herself to leave the town.

The two first meet when Nit stops to ponder the “Prayers for Sale” signed attached to the fence in front of Hennie’s house. Not realizing that the sign is a sentimental joke, the young woman offers Hennie her last nickel for a prayer. Hennie refuses the money, offers to say the prayer for nothing, and invites Nit inside where the two women begin to forge the remarkable bond both will come to cherish. On the one hand,
Hennie, who arrived in Middle Swan at about the same age as Nit, sees much of herself in Nit Spindle and she remembers full well how difficult it was for her to fit into such a strange new place. On the other, Nit, desperately lonely and far from her Kentucky home for the first time in her life, senses in Hennie the kindness of someone willing to help ease her into her new life.

"Prayers for Sale" is the story of a deep friendship between two very different women. One of them is old enough to have lost family during the Civil War, and the other has come of age more than sixty years later during America’s Great Depression. Hennie Comfort is a born storyteller and, to Nit, it seems that she has accumulated a never ending supply of fascinating stories during her long life. It is through Hennie’s stories and advice that Nit learns the skills needed to thrive in her new environment, and telling the stories gives Hennie the sense that she is completing the circle she began some seventy years earlier when she climbed out of the wagon that brought her to Middle Swan.

Sandra Dallas has created two memorable characters in Hennie Comfort and Nit Spindle – she even manages to surround them with a circle of women the reader will remember for a long time. But what make "Prayers for Sale" special are the stories through which Hennie Comfort reveals her life story a little at a time, right up to the present day when she is finally ready to say “deep enough” to her old life. I will not soon forget Hennie Comfort, her mountain lore, or her stories, and I suspect that Nit Spindle and her husband held Hennie’s memory close for the rest of their lives. "Prayers for Sale" is a very fine character-driven novel.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

3.5 stars

It’s 1936 in a small gold mining town in the Colorado Rockies. 86-year old Hennie has lived here for 70 years. When a new young woman moves to town, Hennie befriends her, as she knows it will take time for most people to accept the newcomer to town, especially when they think her husband has taken a job away from a local. Hennie is one for telling stories, so she keeps Nit entertained with stories of her background when and why she moved from the South (as did Nit and her husband), and more about Hennie’s own life and stories about some of the happenings around town over the years. Unfortunately, Hennie’s daughter wants Hennie to move “down” (off the mountain), as she worries with Hennie living alone in a dangerous show more place.

I enjoyed this. There was a lot about quilting, which is something I have never done, but I bet people who do quilt would appreciate that in this book. Leaned a bit about gold mining, as well (one thing - I’d never heard of dredging; I guess I’ve read more about the gold rush and panning for gold). There was one unexpected turn at the end (I see other reviews tell me there was lots of (too much!) foreshadowing about something, but somehow I managed to miss that!). Overall, this was enjoyable. show less

Sandra Dallas has a unique talent for writing griping and accurate historical western novels about strong, wise and courageous women. She is the Phillipa Gregory of western lit, educating us on western history even as she keeps us thoroughly engaged with her passionate story lines. Prayers For Sale is the story of Hennie Comfort, eighty-six, and Nit Spindle, seventeen. These women are united by the harsh conditions of life in Middle Swan, a mining town in Colorado. Though the winter weather is bad enough, it is the tearing emotional dramas that these two very different women will help each other through.
I don’t know any other author who can write so convincingly of strong, western women as Sandra Dallas can. She spares them no mercy, show more putting them through unimaginable hardships, but with their loyalty and friendships with each other they always survive in the end. I can’t read a Sandra Dallas book (and Prayers For Sale is no exception) without feeling like I’ve made new lifelong friendships myself by the end. These are women to be admired, not pitied, and you might even find a few men to like mixed in! At the end of Prayers For Sale I was left feeling satisfied, a little more educated, and like anything can be endured or accomplished. show less

Have you ever been lucky enough to be able to sit down with a few of the elderly folks in your family, and just sit back and let them reminisce about the good old days? I certainly have, and I have treasured every moment of it. That is what this book was like for me, sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, a piece of freshly baked raspberry pie, just listening to Hennie tell her stories from her years of mountain life.

Hennie is about eighty six years old and lives in an old mining town in the mountains of Colorado. Hennie's husband died years before and her daughter is concerned that living alone is just too dangerous for Hennie. Mae, Hennie's daughter, finally persuades her that it is time for her to leave the mountains show more she loves to live with her in Iowa. Hennie doesn't develop hard feelings over this, but admits that it is the most sensible thing to do. Throughout this novel Hennie prepares herself for her departure of Middle Swan, the mining town that has become just as much a part of her, as she is a part of the town, not knowing if she will ever be able to return.

As Hennie is getting all of her affairs in order before she leaves Middle Swan, she realizes there are a few things that the Lord wants her to take care of before she goes. One is to share her precious stories that were obtained through years of living in that mining town and another was to help out her new neighbor Nit by introducing her to some of the ladies in the area. Her final task is to face a secret that she has been running away from her entire life.

Hennie decides to take Nit under her wing because she remembers herself what it was like to be a new gal in a mining town. It would get awful lonely if you waited around for one of those ladies to reach out to you. She finds that they both have a love of quilting, so Hennie uses that as an opportunity to spend time together and even share long forgotten stories. Hennie can tell that Nit honestly enjoys listening to her old tales and actually hungers to hear more. I loved this part of the book, because I think by sharing these stories with the new generation helps to keep the memories and legacy alive long after our loved ones are gone.

If you have been to the mountains in Colorado you know how beautiful the area actually is. Dallas conveys this beauty in her writing as she also paints a picture of how hard life must have been in the mining towns. To think that when women kissed their husbands good-bye in the mornings it could have been the last kiss they shared. It was a dangerous and hard life and women were grateful when they heard their husband walking through that front door in the evenings.

I appreciate the hard work and research that Sandra Dallas put into this novel. Before reading this book I had no idea that a dredge boat for gold mining actually existed. There are actually dredge boats used for excavating purposes today, but during the mining periods working on the dredge boats was one of the most dangerous professions available. I really enjoyed this book, and you will find yourself befriending Hennie if you read it yourself. show less

Prayers for Sale is the story of a friendship between Hattie Comfort and Nit Spindle in a small mining town in Colorado in the early to mid twentieth century. Hattie has lived in Middle Swan, CO for seventy years. She has had a long and mostly fulfilling life in the mining town, however her daughter has been pressuring her to move in with her in her home on the Mississippi River in Iowa. When Hattie meets young newlywed, Nit Spindle, she befriends the girl and helps her adjust to life in the harsh environment. Hattie and Nit do a lot of quilting together and Hattie tells Nits stories of her past and others in the mining town. I really liked the stories told in the book as well as the interesting characters in the town, but something show more seemed off with the way it was written. The stories and flashbacks did not always seem integrated smoothly into the text. I was distracted that the stories that Hattie told about herself were not told in first person. There was a lot of heavy handed foreshadowing that was more annoying than suspenseful (Hattie often referred to an unnamed problem she had to resolve before moving away), I think that the ending would have been more effective if she hadn't referred to it so much earlier in the story. Overall, I liked the story, but wished the actual writing didn't seem so forced and disjointed. It was nice portrait of characters in a turn of the century mining town and I will probably give the author another chance to see if this is a problem overall or just an issue with this book. show less