If you crossed Anne of Green Gables with Little House on the Prairie and added a sharper political focus, the hybrid might resemble Nellie’s Quest. This is the second of Connie Brummel Crook’s thoroughly researched and intelligently written novels about Canadian women’s rights activist Nellie McClung. Set in 1895, in rural Manitoba, the story catches up with Nellie at age 22, shortly after she has returned to her hometown to help her widowed mother. By day, Nellie works as a teacher, presiding over a one-room schoolhouse. By night, she crusades with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, advocating both prohibition and universal suffrage, and meeting with opposition from the very people she is trying to help. Many of the farm women in her community are either too reactionary or too cowed by their husbands to fight for political and social equality. However, there are exceptions.

Nellie’s family friend and mentor, Mrs McClung, along with her son Wes, are among Nellie’s strongest supporters. When Nellie finds herself falling in love with Wes, the question of whether he returns her feelings is set up as a major source of tension in the plot. This is hardly acutely suspenseful, though, given Wes’s surname. Nonetheless, the budding romance works well in the narrative structure, harmonizing with the heroine’s political struggles at some points and providing entertaining counterpoint to them at others.

Ontario-based Brummel Crook is the author of a picture book and four other novels, including Nellie L., the first of what will probably be at least a trilogy of Nellie books. According to the useful notes at the back of the book, the author has taken most of the historical material for Nellie’s Quest from McClung’s autobiographies and novels. This careful attention to detail and respect for historical accuracy is a major strength of the novel, particularly since it seems to have been written with a middle school curriculum in mind. The writing is highly serviceable, making up in clarity and pace what it generally lacks in subtlety. The tone of the narrative is decorous, and the dialogue plain-spoken, perhaps too much so in places where some slightly off-colour idioms would have made the characters seem more vivid. Happily, Nellie’s character is engaging enough to capture the readers’ interest, a necessary first step in making history both relevant and inspiring.