YA Review: Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

Tired of moving from obscure relative to obscure relative in the early 1910s, 16 year-old Hattie gets the chance of a lifetime when a letter arrives from her dying uncle saying she can have his 320 (?) acres in eastern Montana.  All she has to do is finish proving up on his claim, and the land is all hers.  But of course things are never quite that easy, and her freedom is hard-won.  There are no big cities in Montana, and there isn't a city worth mentioning anywhere near her acrage on the open prarie.  The home she comes to is barely a plywood shack, and despite his good intentions, her uncle left Hattie with a pile of debt to work off.  Just to prove up on the claim, Hattie has to fence the property and get a crop to grow-- no easy task for an entire family, and a nearly impossible one for a single teenage girl.  In addition to battling the weather, Hattie struggles with a neighbor who wants to buy her land and a society that discrimates against Germans in the run-up to World War I.  Hattie finds the courage within herself to keep fighting, and summons the help of a few good-natured neighbors to help her try to survive on her own. 
Kirby Larson wrote this book after discovering the story of how one of her relatives was in a similar situation.  This was a Missouri Gateway Readers award nominee in 2009, and is a beautiful but slow-paced book that hasn't been read by as many teens as it deserves.