Dear America: A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Annetka Kaminska

I love reading the Dear America books and find a lot of history in them. A coal minors bride was one of my favorites!!! I would have read it in one sitting if time permitted!!! Thanks to Susan Campbell Bartoletti!!! A great read!! Samantha

This book is incredibly written and a wonderful read. It's full of accurate historical facts, but has an engaging and entertaining story. Most definitely a book I'd recommend to anyone.

A Coal Miner's Bride was a great read, and now my favorite in the Dear America series! It tells the story, in diary form, of a 13 year old Russian Pole, Anetka, who leaves her country to marry a coal miner in America. She is not happy to go, however, especially when her grandmother decides to stay behind - and gives her ticket to a Russian soldier, who will accompany Anetka and her brother.Anetka's husband doesn't seem to love her, but when things are looking better, he dies in an accident and she is left to support his three daughters. And when massacres and her friend Leon enter her life, things are even harder. Will life always be harsh for Anetka?This was a great book, and I'd recommend it for ages 11 - 15. Be sure to read "Dreams in the Golden Country", another Dear America book!

Even though I only skimmed this book over in the book store, I found this to be a great read and am looking forward to reading it fully when it comes in to the library. Thirteen year old Anetka is perfectly content to sit at home with her grandmother (Babicia) (?) (unsure spelling) and her brother, when her father, (who has escaped czarist Russia's Poland) writes to them from America, telling them he has found Anetka a husband. Anetka, who has just had a run in with Russian soldiers, leaves with her brother and a rebel soldier Leon, who takes her grandmother's place on the voyage, for America and realizes too late that her new husband's faults outnumber his perfections. He is nearly more then twice her age, has an obsession with his dead wife, and three children, one of whom is extremely cold to Anetka. I did not read this part perfectly, but Anetka did not seem that devastated by her husband's death. Instead, she works her hardest to keep things toghther and to convince herself Leon is always in her thoughts because he teases her, not because she loves him. This was a great book, and shows a different side of the Dear America books. In the other books, the girls write about how they feel about certain boys, but all of them get married in the Epilogue. Anetka becomes a married woman at 13. How strange is that?

"A Coal-Miner's Bride, the Diary of Anetka Kaminska" is a wonderful new Dear America book. It tells the story of Anetka, who is a Russian Pole who must go to America to marry someone she doesn't know. Throughout the book, she discovers lots of different things about herself and other people. She has many hard things happen to her and you keep thinking she will just give up. This book is one of the best Dear America books, in my opinion. The beginning is a little slow, but the pace quickens after the first several pages. The book teaches about mining, Poland, arranged marriges, and life in a mining town. I would give it 5+++ stars if I could. I think it has a wider age range than some of the other D.A. books. I recommend this to girls ages 10-15.

Annetka Kaminska is a thirteen-year-old girl living in Russian-controlled Poland in 1896. She bitterly resents the Russians that have taken over her country and are forcing her people to give up their language and customs. But she is even more angry when her father, living in America, arranges a marriage for her, with a Pennsylvania coal miner twice her age. A widower with three little girls, Stanley mounrs for his wife and does not love Annetka, treating her almost like a servant. Yet when he dies in a mining accident, things become even more difficult, as she must care for the children and pay the rent. Yet in spite of her bleak life, she finds some hope in the children, and in the possibly of true love. I highly reccomend this novel to historical fiction fans. Annetka is a well-developed, likeable character that you can't help but cheer for as she struggles to survive daily and make a new life for herself in America.