Gigi Mackenzie left home in a hurry ten years ago, and she hasn’t looked back. She’s spent the decade traveling the world, moving fast, never landing anywhere long, chasing something she’s never been able to find, or even define. In all those years, there’s only one thing, one person, she’s truly missed—the one person she hadn’t been running from at all. The person she hurt most when she left.… left.
When she gets word of trouble at home, she knows she has to go back. Tragedy sent her flying, and tragedy brings her back to the nest.
Like his father and his grandfather before him, Reese Webb runs The Apple Jack Saloon. In more than forty years of life, he’s hardly crossed the Idaho state line, and he has no need or intention to go anywhere. Jasper Ridge, and the Jack—that’s his home. He’s a man who likes things to stay the way they are.
Ten years ago, he meant to bring the love of his life home to these familiar, well-worn walls. But the night before their wedding, she ran away.
Now Gigi is back, and Reese realizes there’s a reason he’s been standing in place all this time. He’s been waiting.
But has too much time, and too much pain, filled the space between them?
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I absolutely adored this second chance romance. Wow. Gigi aka Mac and Reese made my heart sing. They got back together rather soon in the story and I feared it would affect my enjoyment but it didn’t. These two grew and learned so much. Individually and as a couple.
Especially Mac. Her reason for leaving Reese in the first place and then returning. Them finding their way back to one another and making it work the second time around. It all came down to them communicating and evolving. No unnecessary drama. This story was all about Mac and Reese. About Mac’s Native heritage and how important it was to not only her but also him. Mac struggled a lot with herself and finding her place. It was well explored and I was deeply invested in her and Reese. This couple learned to lean on another when it mattered!
Anywhere is the third book in the Sawtooth Mountain series and definitely my favorite. The Cahill family made appearances and played an important role in this story as well as the previous ones.
Now knowing there’s a fourth book I can’t wait to read it. This series keeps getting better.
4 Home Stars
“Entwicklungsroman” and interracial love story
*contains spoilers*
What an exceptional story; it lingered long after I had finished reading it. Susan Fanetti is such a gifted storyteller, and this book is no exception. Anywhere is a deeply poignant love story, but it is so much more than that: it is also the story of personal growth, an “Entwicklungsroman”, and it is an incisive critique of the past and present treatment of Native (American) tribes by the US government and by many Whites. Anywhere is the third book in Fanetti’s Sawtooth Mountains stories, but it also works as a standalone.
Our heroine, Georgia “Gigi” Mackenzie is born into the Shoshone tribe and grows up on the (fictional) Sawtooth Jasper Shoshone Reservation. Both her parents are alcoholics and they live in abject poverty, although there is a strong bond of community on the rez. When she is still in her teens, her father, to whom Georgia is very close, lays down his bike while driving home in a drunken stupor. Despite all this Georgie does well in school and she falls in love with an older man, Reese Webb, who is the owner of the only bar in town and she is set to marry him and live happily ever after. But hers is a restless spirit, so on the eve of her marriage she leaves town, never to return until 10 years later, when the news of her grandmother’s passing belatedly reaches her, realizing that she still carries with her whatever she thought to escape…
I have to admit that I had some issues with (identifying) the heroine. I get that she finds the squalor and despair of her life constricting and that, despite being in love with Reese, she wants, or rather needs more than the limiting life he imagines for both of them. So, she goes out into the world to find herself and her purpose and I can understand that. What I really had trouble with is the way she treats Reese, who has been nothing but supportive and that seems to create an imbalance in their love. She professes to love him, but not only does she leave him with the fallout of a cancelled wedding, but she does not definitively break up with him, but just gradually stops writing to him and though leaves him without even closure. So, Reese lives in kind of a limbo, forever missing her and unable to sustain any lasting meaningful relationship with another woman, because although she broke his heart, he will always only love her.
During her years wandering and travelling to even the most remote parts of the world, Georgie has come to realize that she cannot escape the bonds of her family and her tribe and that she carries the feelings of unrest and helplessness wherever she goes. But she has also learnt to see the problems of her community from another perspective and this finally enables her to take steps to help alleviate them.
“Writing the Other” is always a dicey business and I can only speak to it from the perspective from a white European reader who has spent some time studying Native American Literature and History. I do feel that Susan Fanetti has acquitted herself well by and large. She has avoided providing a monolithic view and falling into well-used tropes like “The Noble Savage” or “The Vanishing Indian” that appear frequently in 19th and early 20th century writing (The Last Mohican, for example). Having said that, I was a bit troubled by the mostly negative portrayal of almost all the Shoshone characters that got any page time, except for the heroine. Both her parents are alcoholics, also her sister, who didn’t even stop drinking during her pregnancy and as a result has a son suffering from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, complete with symptoms of delayed development. Then there is Evan Hall, whose isolationist ideals (which are not entirely without merit) are devalued by the fact that he cooks meth on the rez, is a drug dealer and has a sexual relationship with an underage girl that is half his age. And the chief of the band, Chief Job Black Eagle appears ineffective and fails to provide the leadership his community needs. Sort of the only positive attributes described were the sense of family and strong social cohesion of the Sawtooth Jasper Shoshone community.
On the one hand I understand where Fanetti is coming from with this portrayal that reflects the reality of Native American communities across America, where many live in abject poverty, have the highest rate of alcoholism among any ethnic group, the lowest life expectancy, are more likely to be shot by police than even African Americans, and are at the top of a number of other negative statistics. This is the result of decades old, if not centuries old government policy that aimed not only to annihilate the Native American tribes, but also to eradicate their cultures.
On the other hand I am afraid that such a mostly negative portrayal of a Shoshone band reinforces stereotypes of Native Americans of being poor and drunks when that is not the only reality. There are writers and artists, teachers and lawyers, activists and community leaders that fight for and sometimes succeed in keeping their culture alive.
Despite all this – or maybe rather because of all this – I love Anywhere. It made me think and examine my own preconceptions. Also, I didn’t like Gigi very much in the beginning, especially because of her treatment of Reese. But in the course of the novel she undergoes a process of personal growth, which starts with the recognition how she not only wronged Reese, but also her family. I really like how Georgia and Reese redefined the parameters of their relationship. And even though the novel ends on a Happy For Now for the two main protagonists (like most of Fanetti’s stories), it also opens up the possibility of a Happy Ever After.
4.5 stars. I loved Reece and GiGi’s story. This was the best of the Sawtooth stories so far for me. A true second chance story. I really appreciated the deep look at the effects of alcoholism, poverty and hopelessness among native peoples. Seeing the familiar faces of friends from the other books was nice, although this reads well as a stand-alone too. Complex, heartfelt, beautiful story.
The Sawtooth Mountains stories reign as a selection of my favorites from this brilliantly gifted storyteller. This newest installment has become my favorite of the series. It has all of Fanetti’s signature romance elements: loss, grief, and heartache matched so acutely with hope, love and growth.
Fanetti structures Anywhere by separating it into parts, each part told from the third person perspective of each main character. Those parts building to connect the past in a profound present. There is such a vital awareness and vulnerability to each of the characters as these separate parts so honestly and concisely represent development and forward motion for each of them while maintaining such a strong hold on the power of their connection and the intensity it incites.
This newest Fanetti book also showcases important issues in the most enlightening of ways creating purpose for her characters. The brilliance of that purpose is how they come to understand what it means for them as individuals, as the people they want to be. Anywhere is rich with purpose of all kinds. It’s insightful and meaningful. Susan Fanetti digs to the hearts of her characters giving readers people to cherish and respect.
The story takes themes of loneliness and helplessness and exploits them to provide keen depth and honest insight to her characters creating intimate connections between them, the ongoing plot of the story, and the reader. It juxtaposes the ideas of roots versus wings and how acknowledging those two parts of everyone’s true self opens each of us up as more compassionate and present human beings.
Much like the book itself and the understandings of the characters, the themes are simple yet so profound. Much like the storytelling of Fanetti. There is only honesty, through the pain and through the love.