Sadie Rose and the Outlaw Rustlers

Sadie’s body burned with heat from the wind and the sun as she flew across the ground, still blackened from the prairie fire, and ran desperately toward the Hepfords’ place. She forced back the terrible pictures in her head of what the three cowboys could do to her precious family if she didn’t get help to them in time.

Book:Sadie Rose and the Outlaw Rustlers (Sadie Rose Adventure, Book 3) by Hilda Stahl, Crossway Books, 1989

Genre: Historical Fiction

Target Audience: Girls 10-14

Subjects: Promises, Family Relationships, Forgiveness

Summary: A boy learning a woman’s chores? Well, if your family is made up of nothing but men, someone has to learn to cook and clean and mend! And in the Hepford family that someone is Mitch. And in the York family Sadie is the one chosen to teach him. The trouble is that Mitch has no desire to learn these skills and in an attempt to get out of it, he gets sneaky and gets Sadie in trouble – not just with her parents, but with her whole family! If the problems within her family and with Mitch weren’t bad enough, she faces a prairie fire in the middle of the night and a band of rustlers with murder on their mind – the murder of her stepdad!  

Notes: Outlaw Rustlers is the third of the Sadie Rose Adventures. This series tells of a twelve year old girl’s first year living in the Nebraska sandhills during the pioneer days. Sadie has a knack for getting into danger. The series focuses a lot on family relationships as Sadie lives with her mother, stepdad, older sister, older brother, younger sister and younger brother. It also focuses a lot on the hopes and dreams of marriage for the young girls. The culture was for girls to marry quite young so the characters, especially Sadie’s older sister focus heavily on trying to find a good husband. There is also a strong thread of forgiveness and the importance of telling the truth running through the series.

In this third book Sadie is continuing to wrestle with how to forgive when someone hurts you and how to control her anger. She is determined to get revenge on those who have hurt her until her stepdad really challenges her to obey Jesus even when she doesn’t feel like it.

Spiritual Content Recommendation Scale: 5/5

Reviewer: J:-)mi

Romans 12:17-20 – Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.