New Prairies book review for Feisty Deeds II

Excited we just received our first editorial review for Feisty Deeds II: Historical Tales of Batches and Brews.

Hoping this is the first of many positive editorial reviews. If you want to see what The Prairies Book Review had to say about our collection, read the full review below.

A sweeping, intimate, and beautifully told celebration of women’s resilience.

Feisty Deeds II: Historical Tales of Batches and Brews presents twenty-five stories that illuminate how women across eras have stirred, brewed, mixed, and mended their way through history. Framed by a thoughtful foreword from K.J. Dell’Antonia, the collection begins with the premise that women’s daily labor—whether in gardens, kitchens, or makeshift infirmaries—has long shaped lives in ways both subtle and essential.

Across lands and centuries—Ireland to Europe, Renaissance courts to wartime Pacific islands, Appalachia to Ontario—the stories return to mixtures that sustain or undo. Scarce meals, secret herbs, handed-down cures, and poisons brewed in silence form the book’s heartbeat. With each act, women protect, resist, sacrifice, or seize control. The anthology moves between tenderness, darkness, and the mythic, yet each story centers a woman acting with purpose despite her era’s constraints. Wartime mothers endure, Renaissance cooks navigate peril, and modern women face inherited wounds—each leaving a mark. Though varied in style, the stories hum with the same quiet resonance. From era to era, these women shape their worlds through what they mix, prepare, and choose.

Fans of historical fiction and thoughtful portraits of resilience will feel right at home in these pages.

Written by Apple An, Debra Borchert, Paulette Brooks, Teri M. Brown, Elisabeth Carson-Williams, Gabi Coatsworth, Joan Fernandez, Beth Anne Hill, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Beata Kurcz, Heather Dodge Martin, N. J. Mastro, Christy Matheson, Kimberly Nixon, Lorraine Norwood, Margaret Porter, Barbara Buckley Ristine, Suzanne Uttaro Samuels, Elaine Aucoin Schroller, Kay Smith-Blum, Kimberly Sullivan, Ashley E. Sweeney, Nina Wachsman, Patty W. Warren, April Quarto Wright

Edited by Carolyn Korsmeyer, Christy Matheson, Elaine Aucoin Schroller, Kay Smith-Blum, and Kimberly Sullivan

Foreword by K.J. Dell’Antonia, New York Times best-selling author of the novels The Chicken Sisters, Playing the Witch Card, In Her Boots, and the non-fiction book How to Be a Happier Parent.