I stumbled upon Gail Ward Olmsted's books years ago, and ever since they've been a friendly hand to hold in my reading journey. Gail is incredible at writing a heart felt story with characters who feel real. It's a real talent that makes me adore reading anything she puts out. It's hard to find those authors, but when you do... Cherish them. Enjoy your time.

Landscape of a Marriage was a biographical, historical fiction tale all about Gail Ward Olmsted's husband's ancestors. From the minute I met the main characters, I figured Olmsted had to be a family name. If you get the chance to pick up this novel, read the Author's Notes in the back. It's truly incredible how stories and families inspire us. I really enjoyed taking a peek into this ancestry, even if some of this story is more fiction than not. Obviously, we wouldn't know 100% what would happen in that relationship. Either way, it was a miraculous and fabulous story.

Now, onto the actual story:

We meet Mary abruptly. She gets an urgent message to come home; a call to action. Her husband John died suddenly at 32, which brings such a sad start to this story. Once Mary gets home, she reacquaints herself with John's brother Fred. As things go, she ends up marrying Fred. It starts out as a marriage of convenience (with him being a bachelor and all, and her having three young children to care for). Eventually, the two begin falling for each other. Like every normal relationship, there are ups and downs. Fred's a busy man, being an architect and all. He made so many famous buildings along the way! How does a family that's growing and dealing with love, loss, pain, injury and illness keep it together? Well, they work hard and try their best.

There's a lot of interesting set-up in this book that foreshadows the future:
1. Everyone looking at Fred on Mary and Fred's wedding day gives you hints towards how their relationship might play out.
2. Canada geese - These are murder geese. If you see them, you know it's bad luck. Well, not really, but I found it funny. Those creatures can be evil and for some reason they are in so many books I am reading lately!
3. Naming a son after a man who had a tragic passing... You know what's going to happen.

There's also just so many fun parts about this novel:
1. The retelling of American history but from the eyes of a woman experiencing it. I really liked how history progressed and how I saw it from the average Joe's point of view.
2. The ups and downs of a long distance marriage where one partner is considerably well known.
3. The strong points of views of many characters conflicting each other, and everyone having to reach some sort of consensus.

A lot of this story holds up today, as Gail discusses in her author's notes. Gender bias, family roles, grief and loss - there's so much going on in this story, and it feels real. I felt for Mary throughout her story. It's difficult balancing a family and learning to grow from past losses. This book struck home in all the right places. Mary felt like a long lost friend who I wanted to give a hug. We've all been there with our difficulties, and I just wanted to help her. Gail did a wonderful job making her feel real.

Overall, this book is a worthy read. Historical, biographical, contemporary fiction with a dash of romance and drama. This book really does it for me. It transports me away, helped teach me a few things, and made me feel so many feelings. Ah, the feels. To many tears, honestly. In the best and worst ways.

Five out of five stars.

Thank you to Gail Ward Olmsted who provided me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.
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I enjoyed this clean, overview of the lives of this family. I received this for free from the author and I voluntarily chose to review this story. I've given it a 5* rating. Warning, this mentions the death of some babies and family members throughout their lives. This was full of feels and upheavals during Mary's life. This story was compelling or sad at times and was a page turner. A family considered rich, though they strived to make ends meet while moving around the country to work on parks within cities. There is a little romance but mostly it's centered around family and parks. I needed to keep tissue's handy to get through this. ( )

This novel centers on Mary Olmsted, wife of Frederick Law Olmsted, the man behind the design of Central Park and a long list of other public and private landscapes.

In spite of having little evidence to work with, the author does a credible job creating a picture of a family life almost overshadowed by professional genius. I enjoyed learning a little about the Olmsted family's place in mid to late 19th century America.
However, I think first-person narration can be a bit tricky to pull off, and I didn't always love it here. Also, in trying to cover 60-some years of a life, some events get skimmed over. Even dramatic events didn't always have that much resonance when the story has to quickly skip ahead to the next part of life. I might have found it a bit more compelling if it had zeroed in on a smaller range of years.

Thanks to Black Rose Writing and NetGalley for providing a digital review copy. ( )

I quite enjoyed this book. Nice imagery and assortment of settings. ( )

This really didn't work for me. It might have been better in epistolary form - as it is, it's too episodic. In each chapter, they move, or someone dies, or someone is born, or she gets depressed, or she decides he's having an affair, or he's overworking and she tries (and usually succeeds, short-term) to get him to slow down, or... or nothing happens at all, there's just a rather pointless recounting of a day in her life. And each of these things happens repeatedly, and is written in very similar terms. Over and over and... There are happy scenes - the end of most of the chapters have them delighted to be married to each other (especially in bed). But most of the chapters start poorly whether or not they end well - to the point where I was wondering if Mary was bipolar to some extent, up and down. They also, repeatedly, say and think that a) they understand each other perfectly and b) the other can constantly surprise them...and there's no apparent recognition of the contradiction. If you wanted to know more about Frederick Law Olmsted, this would probably be a disappointment - we get only a sketchy skeleton of what he does, usually in a discussion either about some wonderful commission he gets, or how annoying the one he's working on is, or how much he's overworking on this and that and the other. If the characters had been solider, it might have been an interesting take on history - events from before the Civil War to after the Chicago World Fair. But again, the events are seen through Mary's focus on her household and family, and there's no detail to most of them. Researching it was probably fun, but reading it wasn't, for me. In the foreword, we're told that there's almost no information about Mary Olmsted, so the author felt free to make up a great deal about her (she's the only viewpoint character, so _everything_ is "as she saw it" - which is all author fiat). Wish that magazine article had been real, that would have been interesting. In the afterword, the author explains how she modified things to make them more interesting - gave Mary a friend (in the story, her only friend) but changed the name of the actual historical character she slotted into that place, for instance (because her name was also Mary). And made up that Mary's daughter was active in the suffragette movement (and again, no details about that...a bit of name dropping is all). So I can't much trust the "facts" of the story, I'm not interested in the character, and...yeah. Didn't work for me. ( )