Understanding Ursula

Corinne Jeffery's Understanding Ursula trilogy vividly recreates the pioneer world of the Canadian prairies with a multitude of memorable characters. You'll lose yourself between the pages as you watch them struggle to survive and flourish, always at the mercy of Mother Nature and the ever-changing seasons on the unfettered plains. On July 1, 1909, the day after his eighteenth birthday, Gustav Werner takes the inaugural ride on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway between Melville and Regina, to apply for a homestead grant at the Dominion Lands Office. He is eager to become the most thriving homesteader in the townships of Neudorf and Lemberg, Saskatchewan, set aside for Gustav's people, the German Lutherans, by Sir Clifford Sifton in Canada's "Last Best West" land deal. What he doesn't realize is that beyond becoming a man and a landowner, life as he knows it is about to crumble from his grasp. Family drama and conflict plague Gustav as he learns English - the language that sparks hatred in his staunchly traditional father, Christian - and discovers that his parents have arranged his marriage to sixteen-year-old Amelia Schweitzer.

Thriving, book two of Corinne Jeffery's Understanding Ursula series, continues the story of the challenges of the intriguing and contentious Werners, a family of German Lutheran homesteaders on the Saskatchewan prairie. Become reacquainted with their dynamic lives as they try to keep pace with the flourishing new decade and later discover innovative ways to endure the hardships of the Great Depression. With the return of prosperity to the Canadian prairies, Gustav Werner resumes his insatiable quest to acquire more prime farmland. Still, no one is more surprised than he when his hand is forced and his future reshaped by increasing drama and secrets. He wonders why he is persistently entangled in compromising family relationships, and then tragedy, until he begins to doubt his faith. When Mother Nature, in which he has always found peace and solace, too becomes his enemy-sending drought, grasshoppers, hail, and fierce winds that lift the rich topsoil off his land-he starts to despair. Steadily, though, his sorrow and despondency give way to a deepening awareness of his inner strengths and a heightening of his resolve to push onward for all those who count on him.