Really enjoyed the flavor of this book. You find yourself in a muddy tent city much like Lonesome Dove, the television series, which was surprisingly good and of course didn't last long. The mystery is interesting, although if one reads a lot of mysteries the who done it is pretty easy to figure. Anyway, this is still a good read because the author really does put the reader in this time period. Ms. Harris obviously did a lot of research. Hope we see all the characters again. (especially Chin and Mary)

In 1893, Pearl Ryan flees her New York past to take up residence in the gritty new mining town of Ruby City, Washington. Pearl earns her keep and hopefully extra cash for medical school by doing laundry and assisting the local doctor. Pearl has an ambition to become a doctor. However, she simply tells everyone in town that she aspires to be a nurse because she knows that most people will scoff at the idea of women becoming a doctor.

However, Pearl's idyll new life is abruptly disturbed when she realizes that Mayor McDonald has been murdered via poisoning. To Pearl even odder is that the doctor's diagnosis is death from typhoid fever. Other strange deaths follow. Fearing an official inquiry could expose her own secrets; Pearl begins to secretly investigate the sudden rash of deaths inflicting the small silver mining community.

THE PEARL OF RUBY CITY is a gem of a historical mystery starring several intriguing secondary characters and a wonderful but enigmatic heroine. The story line is exciting and extremely well written. Fans of historical amateur sleuth tales need to devour Jana Harris' debut novel as the author scribes a novel rarely seen in a first book. Hopefully, more Ryan novels will follow.

Harriet Klausner

My first introduction to Jana Harris' poetry was in a writing class in which her "I canned those pears" was used as a example. The poem was, I was told, something that came out of research with the migrant fruit workers. True or not, that description fits Oh How can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women.

I was raised partially in the Okanogan so I can't claim to be impartial in my praise of these poems. They do a wonderful job of bringing forth the dirt, hunger, poverty and violence of the pioneer days in the Okanogan. Therefore, the poems nicely counterbalance the tendency to idealize the pioneer era - this is no House on the Praire.

Jana Harris has done an excellent job of giving the pioneer women individual voices - these are poems of a collection of individuals not of a homogenious mass of "pioneer women".

Finally, as tightly written poems, the stories have more emotional impact than they might have had in prose.

(I will confess that I also recommend anything by Jana Harris but this or Mahattan as a Second Language is the place to start.)

This is a touching portrait of difficult lives. Beautiful without being "precious"; a must for every history buff.

Beautiful and haunting, this tiny book has been read and read again and now stands in a place of importance in my bookshelf. As deep as "Wounded Knee," it is very special.