The Far Side of the Loch – a review

The Far Side of the Loch is the second book in the Little House prequels, and also the second to feature Martha Morse, the great-grandmother of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In this book it seemed to me that Martha was starting to feel some of those familiar pangs that we get from time to time as our families grow and our lives change. Martha’s brothers are away at school and even her older sister seems to be changing and becoming more difficult to live with! On the bright side, Martha gets to spend some time with cousins near her own age which is always a childhood treat!

This book had such vivid descriptions of the landscape around Martha’s home that it lead us in our homeschool to take out some books from the library on Scotland and to just enjoy some of the beautiful country side. That helped the children to picture some of the beautiful imagery the author, Melissa Wiley, uses in describing the area around The Stone House and the nearby loch, like this one:

The eastern face of the hill, all grass and gorse bushes, sloped gently down to a stretch of vast, tree-less grassy moor. Its western face was the steep and rocky one, looking out upon Loch Caraid. From its shoulders, Martha could see clear across the valley- the wide lake spread out beneath the misty green mountains opposite the cottages where Father’s tenants lived, the flax field, and the peat hags where the tenants cut slabs of peat grass to burn in all the fireplaces of the valley.

As homeschoolers, this was a good starting place for us to learn a bit about Scotland’s geography and a bit about it history. The little hedgehog in the book, Hedgie, also sent us learning about those little creatures one day too!

Just as in the first book, The Far Side of the Loch has a wonderful Scottish Fairytale woven into the story line that enthralled my daughter but got the boys’ attention as well.

We are eagerly looking forward to reading to continuing with Martha’s story in the next book and in learning more about her homeland of Scotland!

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