It’s not really clear what kind of book this is. It could be a straight religious book (which is what I initially thought it was) rather than a novel. As it turns out it is a somewhat grim tale that takes place in the 1880s. Good luck getting idea of that from the cover.
RK
9 years ago
My first impression was that it was a “missionary schoolmarm” novel in the style of Catherine Marshall’s Christy… which it is, sort of, but with some gritty Old-Western-style action thrown in.
This cover actually isn’t as terrible as some we’ve had on here, but it sets the wrong mood and everything about it screams “amateurish!” from the overly lush green chapel-posing-as-a-schoolhouse (shouldn’t something set in the West be a little more windswept-and-dusty-looking?) to the creepy lady’s head in the clumsily overlaid portrait being obviously grafted onto what looks like a doctor’s scrubs or maybe a janitor’s uniform.
How I’d have made this better: blend a picture of a schoolhouse in some dusty and windswept location on one side of the cover into a shot of a seedy old saloon in some rowdy Western town like the one described in the synopsis on the other side of the cover; then find an appropriate portrait of a woman dressed as a schoolmarm from roughly the period indicated, give it an embroidered oval frame something like the ones people could get for their portraits at the time, and slap that whole arrangement down squarely in the middle of the cover.
That way, you’ve got the whole situation laid out for the readers on the cover even before they turn it over to look at the blurb on the back: a fish-out-of-water story in which a schoolteacher from the old days has to leave her comfortable one-room schoolhouse for a rough-cut Western town. Then they can find out why she has to do this (the whole “somebody stole all our mission money!” plot) from the synopsis.
![cover[1]](https://lousybookcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/cover177.jpg)
It’s not really clear what kind of book this is. It could be a straight religious book (which is what I initially thought it was) rather than a novel. As it turns out it is a somewhat grim tale that takes place in the 1880s. Good luck getting idea of that from the cover.
My first impression was that it was a “missionary schoolmarm” novel in the style of Catherine Marshall’s Christy… which it is, sort of, but with some gritty Old-Western-style action thrown in.
This cover actually isn’t as terrible as some we’ve had on here, but it sets the wrong mood and everything about it screams “amateurish!” from the overly lush green chapel-posing-as-a-schoolhouse (shouldn’t something set in the West be a little more windswept-and-dusty-looking?) to the creepy lady’s head in the clumsily overlaid portrait being obviously grafted onto what looks like a doctor’s scrubs or maybe a janitor’s uniform.
How I’d have made this better: blend a picture of a schoolhouse in some dusty and windswept location on one side of the cover into a shot of a seedy old saloon in some rowdy Western town like the one described in the synopsis on the other side of the cover; then find an appropriate portrait of a woman dressed as a schoolmarm from roughly the period indicated, give it an embroidered oval frame something like the ones people could get for their portraits at the time, and slap that whole arrangement down squarely in the middle of the cover.
That way, you’ve got the whole situation laid out for the readers on the cover even before they turn it over to look at the blurb on the back: a fish-out-of-water story in which a schoolteacher from the old days has to leave her comfortable one-room schoolhouse for a rough-cut Western town. Then they can find out why she has to do this (the whole “somebody stole all our mission money!” plot) from the synopsis.
How helpful you are!
You are totally jonesing for Cover Critics RK.
If by “jonesing” you mean “in withdrawal for lack of subjects to critique” then yeah.