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Feb 25, 2018_Mirelda_ rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Thomas Fox Averill’s newest novel is rich in history, rooted in Kansas soil and driven by a strong female voice. Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr is fiction that rings of truth. It is a story told entirely through journals, letters, photos, drawings, notes and clippings left behind by Nell Doerr, who lived in Lawrence, Kansas, between 1854 and 1889. Nell moves to Kansas with her husband, an abolitionist working on the underground railroad. Nell has already lost two babies, and she loses her husband in Quantrill’s Raid. After so much loss she finds comfort in finding fossils and the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Through the documents Nell left behind, we get to know a resourceful, willful woman who bucks the conventions of her time to contribute her knowledge to the scientific record. Readers will get to know Nell, even as she finds herself through her work and the human relationships she builds over the years.