Strohm, Stephanie Kate. Pilgrims Don’t Wear Pink.

Strohm, Stephanie Kate.  Pilgrims Don’t Wear Pink.    Houghton Mifflin/ Graphia  204p     $8.99 978-0-547-56459-3      ms/hs       E-BN  Realistic fiction

Libby loves history and is completely excited to serve as a costumed historical interpreter at a museum in Maine where it is perpetually 1791.  She loves teaching her young campers all about open-hearth cooking and a variety of needlework crafts.  She also meets two young men.  In the “hunk” she thinks she has met the man of her dreams, but she also has to deal with the Star-Trek-loving nerd.  She also gets drawn into the mystery of a possible ghost aboard the small ship on which she is living.  Libby always presses forward since she is determined to make it work.  She eventually comes to see these two romantic interests for their true selves.

The wardrobe malfunctions involved are hilarious and easily seen by the reader. The author admits to a shoe fetish but must also be very fashion savvy.  The descriptions of open-hearth cooking and nautical terms are evidence of her extensive research.

Set in a living-history center, this novel at times reads as historical fiction, but it is also a mystery and a romance novel while still firmly realistic fiction.  Middle-school and high-school girls will thoroughly enjoy this first novel.

Mystery-Fiction, Romance-Fiction, Historical fiction        -- Joan Theal