Remember the books from your elementary school history classes that based fictional stories around historical events? With hypothetical names like “Nanuk of the North” (about a hypothetical Eskimo boy meeting polar explorers), they were a great learning tool, making history feel entertaining and personal. Does the same technique work for historical romance? In the case of Sara Luck’s western,Rimfire Bride, not so much. While this book is easily read and unobjectionable, it feels just like one of those childhood history reading assignments.

Jana Hartmann and her half-sister, Greta Kaiser, are little more than unpaid field hands on Greta’s father’s farm. Jana works as a schoolteacher every day and then works the fields in the evening upon her return home, on top of paying rent to her hard-hearted stepfather. Working the fields is killing Greta due to a breathing disorder, so one evening their mother gives all the money she has to Jana, urging her to run away with Greta to a cousin in Chicago. From there they travel to the Dakota Territory, hoping to homestead. Their plans go slightly awry, causing them to arrive well ahead of the religious group they’re hoping to join, so the sisters have to spend several months in Bismarck.

Both women experience a lot of growth very quickly as they learn to make their way in what is essentially a frontier town. Fortunately they are befriended quickly by a local lawyer, Drew Malone, and are welcomed by the townspeople. One by one they solve the issues of a place to live, a livelihood, and in Jana’s case, how to befriend a motherless little boy.

There is very little to say about this book. It wasn’t bad at all, and in some places was entertaining. Mainly, though, it was an unrealistic story about two girls emigrating to the west alone, sprinkled with historical anecdotes. I imagined the author bookmarking a history of the Dakotas and saying “this is interesting, I’ll include it. Oh, and this and this…etc.” For instance, before the Dakota Territory became two states there was voter fraud and purchased votes. So Jana encounters an oily politician that tries to pay her to vote for him. That’s it. She turns him down and he acts so ugly that Drew feels he has to interfere and then – nothing. You never see or hear from the politician until he’s mentioned in passing later in that chapter.

The main reason this book felt unrealistic is not the historical accuracy of the events used to drive the plot, but because the two female main characters never experience any real danger. Solutions to their dilemmas just fall into their laps, money never seems to be a problem, and everyone they encounter (with a couple of notable exceptions) treats them with charm and respect. One protagonist does cause a huge problem for another character near the end of the book, but even that provided little excitement since the incident was easily solved and quickly forgiven.

If you want to revisit your childhood reading assignments, with some warm love scenes thrown in, by all means get this book. I can’t recommend it otherwise.