Realistic, researched diligently regarding the times, and an eye-opening look at the west. First chapter was a little bumpy for me, then it was all smooth sailing. Highly recc.. Knew Calamity Jane from the show Deadwood; this was a nice expanded version.

A chapter of Calamity Jane’s life is showcased here and if anything it has piqued my desire to know more about her. Told from the POV of a 30-year-old Jimmy Glass as well as a 12-year-old. It was an interesting read, gritty at times but heartfelt. I could say this was a coming of age story but with the language, it wouldn't be appropriate for the middle age reader.

I would have loved some author notes just to know what was fictionalized, but I did receive an ARC, hopefully, the final copy contained them.

My thanks to the publisher (via Netgalley) for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is a writing with a well-written story. Complete with aspects and events that readers cannot miss. Display of a typical classic style embodied in a small mining town in South Dakota. The story is depicted between reality and character that is quite striking. The aspects of American history are well touched.
Overall, this story deserves to be enjoyed. This story is very interesting and filled with characters that we can hate or enjoy. I never feel bored until the end of the page.

"Oh honey, you're a boy of twelve. Everything you think, the second you think it, is written all over your face.

Oh honey, I loved this book.

Really. It is very different from what I expected, I had requested it a long time ago and I was not determined to read it, because the setting didin't persuade me. Luckily for me I chose to read it anyway, to finish the year. I really liked it. I finished 2018 with a satisfyng reading and with tears on my face, but happy because I have chosen this book for the last days of December.
Yes, I read this book very late compared to the release date, but if I hadn't waited, if I hadn't waited for the right time to read it, I wouldn't have liked it as much as I liked it now.

The book tells the story of a twelve year old boy and his sister.
The novel begins in medias res, at the exact moment in which an action is taking place. There's a tavern fight, insults flying and guns pulled out. Soon Calamity Jane appears, but she is a Calamity Jane a little bit different from what I imagined. She's grown up, drunk. Our portagonist is now adult, a wanderlust, a knight who continually turns to the pastures and territories of America, homeless and yet with a girlfriend and a family. He helps Calamity Jane get out of a bad situation at the bar. He thinks she doesn't remember him, he hopes to be recognized, because they've known each other years before. The woman saved him from poverty, along with his little sister.
Initially she pretends not to know him, but then asks him about his sister, and the two begin to talk about everything that happened in the eighteen years in which they were separated.
The boy's story is sad. At twelve he finds himself without a mother, with a sick father and a very peculiar little sister, who speaks only when she wants, who avoids eye contact and lives in a world of her own. When the father gets very sick, the boy decides to transport the parent and sister to the nearest town, to find a doctor to help him. With so much effort the boy manages to bring the cart into the town (Deadwood), and here the father is quarantined along with others in a tent. He's got the pest. The boy carries his little sister, of course. The two meet immediately Calamity Jane, this iconic figure of the West, an almost sacred figure, impossible to imagine for two children of their age, the woman with the guns. A legend. Soon the boy discovers the good sides and the less good sides of this celebrity.
Waiting for his father to be healthy again, the boy decides to work for a friend of Calamity Jane, a lady who runs a brothel. The woman is happy to have new helpers, although the little girl seems a little too quiet. Soon things get better for Hour Glass. Yes, Hour Glass is the girl's name. Nice, isn't it? In spacecraft she would be called Flower, because she is the daughter of a Native American who called her so, but Jane gives her another name, because it sounds better that way. After all, the little girl is changing, she's changing her life too, so changing her name itself isn't weird at all. While the brother retains his name, but changes his own nature. He has always been an observer, but thanks to the contact with Jane and the new friends of the town he grows and becomes adult. In the end, already having brought the father and sister to town was an adult act.

The character that tells the story is a young boy, and yet adult. Treat the sister with love and devotion, try to help her in her contact with the world, a world that appears too strong for a child like her. The boy is an orphan of mother, yet recognizes in his sister's mother a new source of love and kindness. Flower's mother is Native American, belongs to a tribe, and speaks with a wonderful language that I would have liked to meet more often in this book.

There are many themes addressed in this book: From filial love to love between friends, from courage to kindness, from justice to fun, from contact with the different (different ethnicity, different mentality, different color of the skin) to the commonality of the Heart.
This book gave me so much because, in its linearity and its simplicity of plot, it managed to grow in me the love for the characters and for the places where the story takes place. It's not a cheerful book, it's often sad. Yet it gave me so much, made me smile and cry, made me sigh, made me dream, made me entertain and angry. As I read it the time passed and I did not realize it, because the characters seemed real, they seemed my friends, and the places seemed to be two inches from me.
I can only recommend this book. However, enter without knowing much of the plot, because the surprises are always around the corner. Your heart will thank.

I REALLY enjoyed this book! The characters were believable and enjoyable. The taming of the west was not a pretty or easy time for everyone. But thanks to Calamity Jane and Madame DuFran it was a little easier and for Jimmy Glass and his sister Hour. This is definitely one I'll be recommending to my book club.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read and review this book.

A fantastic historical fiction story set in the Wild West. Beautifully written with some lovely wit thrown in. Recommended.

Americans love westerns and few characters stand out as vividly as do Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. Long after the west ceased to be “wild,” these two took their skills on the road and created a wild west show for all of America to see. They became the stuff of legends. In Hour Glass, we find Calamity Jane toward the end of her life, less of a star and more of a legend but still as brassy and sassy as always. This, however, is a story as much about Jimmy Glass and his sister, Flower aka Hour, as it is about Jane. It is a story of a young boy whose father was dying who fought against the elements, the town and against all hope, and found help in the least likely place – Calamity Jane and the patrons of the saloon in which she was living.
The story of Jimmy Glass and his sister, is a beautiful, albeit heavily fictionalized, one. Michelle Rene crafts a wonderful tale that invokes an era that many have only seen in old televised westerns or on Deadwood. Her prose is elegant and vivid. However, and I really do hate to add the whatever to this review, as an historian I would prefer the accounts of the real people used in historic fiction either to be very accurate or fictional characters used in their stead. This is not Calamity Jane any more than her version of Vincent Van Gogh was the real Van Gogh. When using real, actual characters who are not so far removed from our current generation, the writer has the power to re-write history and whitewash the actual character as well as the times, events and places. This was not a beautiful time – it was ugly, mean and very dirty. I prefer real facts with all of the dark realities that go with them over the poignant re-telling that some authors are doing today, including Michelle Rene. It’s easier to tell a pretty story and make hard characters soft than it is to show the reality of our history.
If you want to read a very fictionalized account of American history then you will probably like this book. I, however, cannot rate it above 3 stars and, for me, that is being generous based entirely on her writing ability.

I always had this obsession with Calamity jane and this fed it! Very fun story about the wild west and why I wanted to live there! Enjoyable.

Hour Glass

Bigger than life as well as a living legend, this is the story of Calamity Jane as told through the eyes of a 12 years old, Jimmy Glass.

When first we meet both Jimmy and Calamity it is 1894, Jimmy is 18 years older when he finds her in a saloon staring into the barrel of a gun. Hoping she remembers him -- which she does, they spend some time reminiscing about the past.

In 1876 both Jimmy and his sister take their sick father into the town of Deadwood, in the Lakota Sioux territory of the Dakotas. They are seeking medical attention for their father who is suffering from smallpox. Taken in by the owner of a saloon/brothel, Dora DuFran, they meet up with Calamity who in her way becomes quite fond of both children. Hour is Jimmy's six year old sister who is not a normal child (today I think she would be classified in the autism spectrum) and yet somehow she quietly bonds with Calamity. Calamity is a world unto herself. A teller of tall tales, dressed in men's buckskins and an alcoholic as well. Yet, there is a softness underneath her brazen and bold exterior, as she looks out for the two Glass children. Seen through the eyes of a 12 year old she is mystifying.

This story told so vividly is Jimmy's and his sisters as well, it is their lives that run parallel with Calamity while they are in Deadwood. The story is lush in detail, so much so you can see the town of Deadwood and its inhabitants quite clearly in your mind's eye. The stories told by Calamity are a "hoot" and she never fails to regale you and her audience as well.

This novel has warmth, character and backbone. Set in the West at a time when there was lawlessness, poverty among most in a mining town, where claims were haphazard and jumped at a drop of a hat, you are spellbound. I was honestly conflicted, wanting to get to the next page as quickly as possible, yet wanting to slow down and read the book without wanting it to end.

Ms. Rene told a fascinating tale about a more than fascinating character. She told it with spirit and gusto and I was loving it from the first page. This was not the Doris Day musical of the 1950's, far from it. Kudos to Ms. Rene for bringing Calamity Jane back to life and sharing her talent with us, the public. My thanks to NetGalley for providing me this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

https://ethelsbooks.blogspot.com/

The pa of the Glass children, Jimmy and Flower, dies of smallpox in a pestilent tent hospital in Deadwood, South Dakota. They had pulled him into town from their shack on his gold claim, proving their mettle. Madame Dora DuFran takes charge, and Calamity Jane, who’d followed Wild Bill Hickok to Deadwood, works in the pest tent, caring for their pa, watching him slowly fade. Jimmy and Flower, who goes by Hour, sleep in DuFran’s storage room, which previously housed Jane, who prefers to sleep off her routine drunks outside under the stars, anyway. Hour’s mom, a Lakota, visits Jimmy in his dreams to offer wisdom as he confronts challenges (one of which is first love) in their few weeks at DuFran’s brothel, until their pa passes. Jane holds a fundraiser for her “daughter” Hour’s education, receiving enough to send both children to a convent school, giving them a good start in life. Jimmy channels Jane in a life of constant travel, but Hour marries and raises a family in Kansas City. While working as a storyteller in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, Jane meets up with Jimmy and they catch each other up on their lives. Jimmy sees her only once more, in a small town where she was put off the train, at a hotel on her deathbed. The happily ever after comes to Jimmy when his first love finally leaves prostitution for marriage.

This is an interesting view of Calamity Jane’s life, from the perspective of a child she and Dora DuFran rescued. Rene kept the integrity of a pre-teen boy’s point of view, while filling the cast of characters with real life colleagues of Jane: Wild Bill, Dora DuFran, Charlie Utter, and a passing reference to Buffalo Bill. A fictionalized account of Calamity Jane is likely more appropriate than a biography, as her tall tales live on. Rene gave a noble account of the fundraiser given for Jane’s “daughter,” interspersed her best tall tales throughout the story, and followed the chronology of Jane’s life that is accepted as true, or the truest. It’s a raucous story, such as Jane’s own life.

I was fortunate to receive a digital copy through NetGalley.

I posted this on my website, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, and B&N.

Historical fiction featuring Calamity Jane -- fun read about brutal times in the wild west.

Hour Glass is the kind of book that takes the reader into the heart of the wild, wild west... and when I say heart, I mean it. This story is heartfelt and heartbreaking. It is a glimpse of life during the era of Calamity Jane. The reader is introduced to Jane through the eyes of Jimmy Glass, a 12-year-boy who drags his father to town with hopes of saving him from small pox. Jimmy, on the cusp of manhood, is charged with protecting his little sister Flower/Hour Glass. It is an intricately woven, character driven plot. Readers that really enjoy character studies will probably enjoy this book a lot.

.This book is exceptionally written. The characters come to life and jump out of the pages. We get to know Jane, Jimmy, Hour and the rest of the cast intimately. I can honestly say it goes deep with the end result being a multilayered story that allows the reader to form their own opinions and make their own judgments.

Why only three stars you wonder? For me personally, I found the plot to drag somewhat. It lacked some of the Wild West grittiness that I love in a western. It's more about character growth and coming of age. Definitely worth the read if this storyline and Calamity Jane is of interest to you.

I received an advanced copy from Netgalley. Thank you to Michelle Rene and Amberjack Publishing.

4.5 stars! I truly enjoyed this gritty and gripping journey into the wild west, lawless, cowboy town of Deadwood, South Dakota.

This novel is narrated by twelve-year-old Jimmy Glass. He and his younger sister, Hour, travel to Deadwood to seek help for their dying father. The legend of Calamity Jane is wrapped up in this unique and intriguing story that had me close to tears several times. Never would I have imagined a ‘western’ story to pull at my heartstrings the way this one did. The characters in this novel really got to me.

The writing was exquisite. I was fully drawn into this tale from chapter one. The characters were real. Their relationships were intense, captivating and emotional. The atmosphere was vivid and mesmerizing. The old western slang dialogue was done perfectly.

There was a point where my attention fell slightly, but I was still completely invested in the characters and their journey. This is one of those books that the more I think about it, the more I love it.

This was a Traveling Sister Read that we all enjoyed.

A big thank you to NetGalley, Amberjack Publishing and Michelle Rene for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

5 Bright and Sparkly Coulee Stars to Hour Glass! 2018 Favourite Reads Book!

HOUR GLASS by MICHELLE RENE is an endearing, heartwarming, and charming tale about the legendary Calamity Jane that is told through the eyes of 12-year-old Jimmy Glass. There is so much heart and soul to this story that it really pulled at my heartstrings.   

MICHELLE RENE delivers a beautifully written, interesting and a compelling story here with great dialogue and fantastic characters that you can’t help but to fall in love with.  Michelle Rene does such a great job with the portrayal of Jane’s character and the characters of Jimmy and Hour Glass.  The relationship that develops between Jane, Jimmy, and Hour is so touching and sweet.    

This was a Traveling Sisters Group Read, and we all ended up in the same coulee on the same side this time.  We all loved this book!

Hour Glass was such a fun, entertaining, feel-good and warm story that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish!  It was such a pleasure reading this absolutely beautiful historical fiction novel.  Highly recommend!

Published:  February 20th, 2018 by Amberjack Publishing
Thank you so much to NetGalley, Amberjack Publishing, and Michelle Rene for an advanced copy of this book to read and review!

Twelve year old Jimmy has to make a decision. His Pa is sick with small pox and he knows that he has to get some help so he loads him onto wagon and he and his little sister head to the town of Deadwood.
Once there his sister's little oddities make her stand out more than ever...but then a chance meeting with a ornery drunk changes both their lives.
Enter Calamity Jane.


She cusses, she drinks, she shoots stuff (and people) and she helps take care of the sick that are in the tent in town. She also finds a soft spot for Jimmy and his little sister. She sets them up in a room in the local brothel while they wait to see if their dad is going to get better.

During that time period life happens and they get to know Jane.


I've been thinking that 2018 was not going to be my year for reading. Nothing I've read has done much for me until this little book. I don't care if it is historical accurate. I LOVED it. I loved the language, the writing, the characters....and Jane.
I asked the boy child what I should give a book that made me cry and he said no stars...but nope this gets all the stars. For an ornery character that you can't help but love.


Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.

4.25 Tears? At the end of a western of all things? I'll blame it on the steriods. Loved this, the story telling reminding me of sitting around the campfire and telling stories of days gone by. Calamity Jane, presented in all her many colors, hard drinking, expert marksman, friend or possibly more of Wild Bill, defender of the weak. To the Glass children she would be much more.

Really didn't know much about this woman, knew who she was of course, but few details. Quite a bit of this story is an accurate historical portrayal, and the author did a fantastic job of fitting her fictional story within it's frame. The life of prostitutes, the difficulties of life on the frontier, the violence, the town of Deadwood and the horrible smallpox epidemic that cost so many their lives. This story though was Jane's, her own love of storytelling, her strengths and her many weaknesses. The atmosphere was amazing, so realistic, vivid. Even adored the support characters, but my heart fell for young Hour. A young girl, who will owe much to Jane and will add much to this wonderful story.

So glad more and more Westerns are once again being written, such a colorful time of our past. Not all good, but colorful with some amazingly hardy people waiting in the wings.This was quite a large sisters read and I think the first time we all loved the story.

ARC from Edelweiss.

An endearing story about Calamity Jane! (YES, this is a western frontier story)

It turns out that Jane has a huge heart when it comes to kids and those she loves. Talk about a book featuring a strong woman-she is not only fearless, she takes two orphaned kids under her wing and nurtures and protects them.

Jimmy is 12 and has a younger half-sister, Flower (loved her!!). The story takes place in Deadwood, South Dakota and smallpox is rampant as well as many other dangers of that time (1903). They live with Jane and her friend Dora in a restaurant/saloon named Diddlin Dora's which also was a house of prostitution.

This is historical fiction, but it has many characters that were "real" people and Deadwood is a "real" town. It is full of humor, sorrow, compassion and heart.

The story felt authentic and was absolutely wonderful!

5 Living in the Wild, Wild West stars to Hour Glass, a story of friends and family (and Calamity Jane!)! 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

Please don’t let the “western” turn you away. Hour Glass is a multi-dimensional story of family and friends as family that happens to be set in raw, wild, Deadwood, South Dakota.. From the prologue, I was invested in this book and its characters. If you need likeable characters, there are plenty to love here.

Calamity Jane is uncouth. She’s a fast talker. She swears. A lot. She is also big-hearted, which was visible when she ran into two young children, Jimmy and Hour, who desperately needed help for their father infected with smallpox. Oh how I adored Jimmy and Hour. Jimmy is the older brother who solemnly protects his sister, who’s quieter, less socially adept, more vulnerable. The relationship that forms between Calamity, Jimmy, and Hour melted my heart. If you are a cat fan, cats make a special cameo in this book.

The pacing of the writing, the authenticity of the dialogue, the connections among the characters; it’s all so genuine and full of heart. Hour Glass is a must-read tale of family, no matter how you find it.

This was a Traveling Sister read, and this book received lots of well-deserved love from the group! That’s quite the endorsement! Please check out Brenda and Norma’s blog for their combined sister reviews and much more: http://twogirlslostinacouleereading.wordpress.com

Thank you to Michelle Rene, Amberjack Publishing, and Netgalley, for the complimentary copy to review.

4.5 legend stars

Calamity Jane was a living legend, a hard living, hard drinking "cussin" woman who seemed to have tamed the west. She was fearless, loved and perhaps feared by many and in this novel, we are given a picture of this woman. Jane strode around in buckskin, drank any man under the table, but also seemed to have a side to her that was full of compassion and kindness.

This wonderful book blended so much of what is known about Jane while introducing characters like Jimmy Glass and his half Indian sister Hour plus a madam named Dora who it turns out was a real person. In this book, the author gives Jane personality, making one like her immediately and look to her character as one of integrity and grit. Jane protects Jimmy and Hour and many members of the brothel run by Dora also help out especially when Jimmy's dad succumbs to smallpox. Hour is a different child, strange, saying little and seeming to live in her own world. Jane understands her and comes to love her.

I am so happy to have read about this American icon. Not really have I been a fan of Westerns, but this novel clearly had emotion, love, and wonderful characters going for it. I recommend this novel most highly for its stellar characters and the way it was able to show that people who are often portrayed as being bad, have so much goodness residing within them.

Many thanks to Michelle, Rene, the publisher, and netgalley for making this advanced copy available to me.

Sorry- couldn't read this one. I tried, but the writing bothered me too much. I didn't like the overly country hick dialogue, but was mostly turned off by the language. Only a couple pages in and young Jane had already said the F-word amongst other swearing. Just no interest to me, despite what sounded like a promising storyline. sorry