Even though this story plays in modern times, for the most part, the story itself has been repeated over generations in rural America. In this book, Ginger Martin lost her husband in the Iraq War and now lives with her three kids on the farms that her husband’s family owns and has owned for generations. Like many women before her, Ginger finds herself struggling to maintain the farm properly, lacking the strength of male workers to maintain the "homestead" so often described in Wild West novels. Similarly to those movies or stories, a savior appears for Ginger as well, but not in the form of a cowboy, but of Samuel.
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Samuel is dressed in a Civil War uniform and it turns out is a person that cannot progress into the afterlife, but keeps wandering the earth, seemingly to seek people like Ginger, where he can help out. We never quite find out why Ginger and her family can interact with Samuel, but after a while this really does not matter. What matters is the help and support that Samuel provides to Ginger and her family. He helps not just in maintaining the farm, but also in Ginger finding closure with her husband’s death and the family finding together in their farm as the true home.
This book is unique in the story it tells; it mixes traditional stories of women struggling to maintain the farm and finding help from strangers wandering through with elements of a modern ghost story in the form of Samuel. I liked this book because it was easily mixing the traditional story telling aspects with some quite radical ideas and still evolved into a very traditional story.
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