This young girl overcomes whatever life has to throw at her. She was--and still is my ideal. I first read this book when I was about 10 and re-read it every year or so. My original book was recently lost during a move and I now have to have another. As I read, I became this young girl and seemed to experience her love, heartache, and adventure. It is difficult to read when you are crying so hard you can't see the page. I have read this so often that I now start crying pages before I should. This is a life-learning book that should be required reading in middle school or even high school. Normally, I like books, I cherish some books but this book will always be my favorite love. I wanted to be Katherine Mary Flannigan. I only have 1 daughter and her name is Kathryn.

I first got this book when I was in 7th grade over 25 years ago and have read it at least 8 times. After our cat used it to make a birthing bed I searched for it again until I found another. I recommend this book to any women young and old, I could read it over and over.

Another required reading book from junior high . . . it was wonderful. My mother and my grandmother both read and loved it.

The life she led makes you count your blessings. Such heartbreak and such love.

Nearly 40 years ago, as a 15 year old girl, I took this book from my parent's bookcase on a cold, Sunday in March. I held out little hope because it was my mother's book, but I was bored and had run out of library books. From the opening page I was enthralled. I read all afternoon and into the evening. The love story of Kathy and Mike appealed to my young, romantic heart. But as I moved into the middle of the book, I missed the romance and found it less exciting. Their married life was not as romantic as their courtship. I read it again twenty years later and saw a different book, one about a maturing marriage and the problems it faced. It seemed much more relevant as a 35 year old mother. I read it again a couple years ago and saw even more in the story; it became a much richer novel each time I read it.

This book was a wise purchase by my mother in 1947 for it has continued to live, and grow. As a girl it was a love story, 40 years later it is the portrait of a marriage. I found a copy in a used book, just like my mother's. I will read it again.

Mrs. Mike is a surprisingly contemporary story whose main character is a strong female. I think it was written about 40 years ago, so parts of it are a bit dated (and perhaps politically incorrect by today's standards). However, it is a wonderful, tender love story set against the background of the extreme and brutal climate and geography of the Canadian northwest. It is the story of a young Irish girl from Boston who falls in love with a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. The young husband, a strong male character, adores his wife and treats her accordingly. The book also depicts Indians (now called First Nation people in Candada) in a wonderful fashion, as well as strong and deep friendships among the women. This book should be required reading for young people, especially in a time when bonds between people are easily shattered and hardship is looked on as something to be avoided at all cost. Our book group loved it and read it based upon the memory of one of our members who read it as a very young woman and always treasured it in her heart.

I read this book several times as a young teen over 20 years ago, and remembered it as one of the best books I had ever read. Recently I picked it up again to see if the story was as interesting to me as an adult as it was when I was a girl. I discovered that my own experiences as a grown woman gave the story much richer meaning for me. The book not only held up, it was even better.

Mrs. Mike is the story of a young innocent girl who falls in love with man and follows him to the remote Canadian wilderness . It is packed with scenes so vivid and real I could remember them perfectly for 20 years. The romance and adventure called to me as a teenager; the friendships, love and loss call to me as an adult.

I cannot reccomend this book highly enough.--Erin Smit

I read MRS. MIKE for the very first time recently and it has quickly joined my top "5 best books ever" list. Therefore, no matter what, I don't think this book could have ever equaled it in any way. There was a lot of good writing here and a good story, but it got bogged down. Personally, I would have liked some parts to have been shortened and others expanded upon. I would have loved to have heard more about Kathy's growing up with Mrs. Mike and Sgt. Mike and the twins and more about what happened with Crazy Dancer and the daughter. Overall, it was an enjoyable read.

I found this book by accident in a [local store]and immediately snatched it up...I usually would wait and order from Amazon, but seeing the book I really wanted to read it now.

I read "Mrs. Mike" a very long time ago (I was eight). I read it as a great adventure...my sister read it as a romance. I could never understand that aspect until I read the book again in my twenties. The wonderful thing about this (The Search for Joyful) book is that, yes, there are the elements of romance but again the heroine goes on an adventure that imparts information about history from an unique perspective. Anytime a book can teach, entertain and be subtle about it is a plus.

I enjoyed the book almost as much as I had "Mrs. Mike" years ago. It was a pleasant read, made me laugh, made me cry in places and made me hope there wasn't going to be another 50-year wait for more stories about Mrs. Mike and her family.

If you are looking for another book "just like MRS. MIKE," I'm afraid that THE SEARCH FOR JOYFUL will disappoint you. It's about a different young woman's journey out of girlhood, set in an entirely different era even though it begins just one generation after the classic tale of a Canadian Mountie's bride. While Katherine Mary Flannigan is among its characters, this is her adopted daughter's story. I'm glad I was able to put aside my preconceptions and let Kathy Forquet take me along on her own unique journey, because I found it a very rewarding trip.

This Kathy, as readers of MRS. MIKE will remember, came into the lives of Mike and Kathy Flannigan after their one-time household helper - the Cree girl Oh-Be-Joyful, who ran away to marry a half-breed trapper named Jonathan Forquet - died and left a baby daughter behind. Jonathan brought the child to the woman his young wife had called her "more than sister," and the Flannigans added the little girl to their adopted twins. Who, with their French ancestry, fit in among the northern Alberta village's white youngsters; while small copper-skinned Kathy, a First Nation child growing up in a white family, fit in nowhere except at home. "Kathy is to be included," Mrs. Mike consistently told Connie and Georges. But as her story opens, Kathy Forquet is striking out on her own for the first time - to answer her country's World War II call for young women to study nursing - and merely being "included" is no longer enough.

In the cosmopolitan city of Montreal, she find a profession to excel at and to love. She also finds prejudice among her fellow nursing students, and even - eventually - in the family of the young man she marries. But there is another young man, a fellow "Indian" also serving in the Canadian Army; and there are friends like Kathy's roommate Mandy, her old schoolmate Elk Girl, and "Sister Egg."

Through study and hard work, through coming under enemy fire in a front-line medical unit, through loving and losing and learning to love again, young Kathy journeys just as far in this book as her adoptive mother did in MRS. MIKE. It is written with more frankness because it was, after all, published 50 years later. If you're planning to hand it to your child, be warned about that! But I personally thought it well done, and well worth reading.