"Tinsmith 1865, Sara Dahmen’s first book in the Flat’s Junction series, delivers Marie’s story with fire and precision. The world of the Dakota Territory is developed with clarity and attention, and the Polish families that inhabit it are colorful and sympathetic. When Marie’s family arrives under the direction of her father, Stanley, after the loss of her mother—the heart of the family—there is a fair amount of distress. How will the Kotlarczyks afford to set up their tinshop? To build a home? To live? The family friend that offered them land is in less than optimal financial straits himself, so the Kotlarczyks must seek loans that come with strings that affect Marie directly. The railroad threatens to split the property, the war takes the lives of too many young men, and Marie’s father suffers too much to be of use to her. As the book progresses, we see Marie become more and more independent and more and more of a smith, thanks to instruction from her older brother, and less and less a candidate for marriage and motherhood. Marie’s journey of self-discovery in a difficult time is engrossing and entertaining. Her feisty spirit and unwillingness to compromise what she loves and who she is drives Tinsmith 1865 from the first page to the last."" — Shannon Carriger, Manahattan Book Review

""This is a wonderful novel. Sara Dahmen clearly knows her subject matter. Dahmen, one of America’s few women coppersmiths, works with tools from the 1800s to make vintage cookware. This background, combined with careful research evidenced by the included bibliography, lends a real authenticity to her writing that gives the reader a genuine sense of life in a frontier town. More than just a history lesson, however, Dahmen’s plot is refreshingly unpredictable, making it difficult to put aside by the end. Most striking, however, is the complexity of her main character, Marie. This is a motherless teenage girl from an immigrant family who is attempting to navigate young womanhood in the foreign culture of a frontier without a role model. She is also a creative spirit who resists the predefined gender roles of her time. She is a person in whom very understandable self-doubts blanket the spark of an indomitable spirit. In other words, she is a complex, fully developed character, and it is a pleasure to watch her evolve throughout the novel. Currently in production to become a motion picture, Tinsmith 1865 is the first novel in the planned, six-volume Flats Junction series. On finishing this novel, readers will almost certainly be looking for the next in that series."" — Annie Peters, San Francisco Book Review"