Girl Waits With Gun

By Amy Stewart

It's the early 1900s and Constance, Norma and Fleurette are out for a ride in their buggy when a car smashes into it, injuring both Constance and Fleurette. Unfortunately, the man driving the car was a thoroughly unpleasant person. He claimed the women ran into his car and he refused to pay for the repairs to the buggy.
Constance tracked him down to his office in the factory his family owned. She found him surrounded by his gang of toughs but that didn't stop her from demanding payment.
She may have been in the right, expecting him to pay for the repairs. But he is of another mind and thus begins a trying time for the three women with harassing letters, bricks thrown through the windows of their farm house and threats to kidnap the youngest one, Fleurette, who is only eighteen. Their house is broken into, their furniture and knick-knacks smashed, and a fire started in the kitchen in an attempt to burn down the house.
Constance goes to the sheriff and he and his deputies try their best to keep the women safe from the gang. The sheriff even goes so far as to arm the three women with pistols and teach them how to use them safely. And working together, Constance and the sheriff will attempt gather enough evidence to put Mr. Evil Factory Punk and his gang of toughs behind bars for a good while.
The three women live in an isolated farm house they inherited after their mother died. The two older sisters are in their thirties and the youngest is a mere teenager. Since there is no man in their lives, the gangsters view them as easy targets. But Constance is made of stern stuff and she refuses to knuckle under to the threats and scare tactics.

This was an interesting story, based loosely on the real Constance Kopp, who was one of the first women to be a sheriff's deputy. The sheriff was so impressed with her during the course of that terrible year when she and her sisters were under attack, that he offered her a position as deputy and she accepted.
However, I was rather disappointed because, once again, I was fooled by the blurbs which claimed the book was "romping, hilarious" and "funny" and that it had "humor." What the blurbers consider to be funny and what I consider to be funny must be vastly different. I didn't find the book the least bit amusing. This is not to say it was not a good and interesting story and I enjoyed it very much. But funny? No.

For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/amy-stewart/girl-waits-with-gun/.