The Wilderness Books In Order

Publication Order of The Wilderness Books

‘The Wilderness’ is a series of novels written by Pamela Ackerson. The series tells the story of a woman who travels into the past and meets the love of her life.

+The Story

The Wilderness is a blend of science fiction, magic, and history. The books also strongly feature elements of romance. The Wilderness series focuses on Doctor Karen Anderson. Karen has a thing for antiques. She also has an interest in history. However, never in her wildest dreams could she imagine ever walking amongst the very figures of American history she used to read about.

But that is exactly what happens to Karen when she gets an antique bed. Karen goes to sleep and wakes up to find that she has been transported centuries back to the era of America’s war with the natives of the country.

Waking up in Indian Country is a shock for Karen. But she quickly adapts and finds that there is a role for her to play in the past. The Wilderness series basically follows Karen as she traverses the various tribes and peoples of the wild west even while trying to stay alive long enough to return home.

Over the duration of her journey, Karen meets a native American by the names of Standing Deer. They fall in love and that catapults Karen into a whole new adventure. Karen finds that she is drawn into the conflicts that surround Standing Deer.

Karen wants to help the Indians but she also knows how history plays out and it isn’t always clear to her just how many changes she can make. Despite her curiosity as a scholar, Karen’s heart bleeds for the Indians and their trials and, more often than not, she is driven by compassion to act on their behalf.

Karen is also curious about her connection to Standing Deer and the fact that he is her soul mate. Their relationship takes over and gives birth to new stories. This includes the tale of Matthew Standing Deer, a firefighter, Paramedic and the son of Karen and Standing deer.

Matthew gets his chance to explore the Lakota nation when circumstances drag him into an adventure chock full of greed and death. Along with Jennifer, Karen’s daughter, Pamela Ackerson uses the Standing Deer family as a lens through which she can explore the history of the Native Americans and their struggles.

While the Wilderness series uses a historical setting to tell its stories, the novels are not exactly historical in nature. Pamela endeavors to stay true to the major elements of American history but her goal is to tell an entertaining story filled with romance and adventure rather than delving into the historical details.

The author has been accused of ending her books a little too abruptly. The biggest complaint thrown at the Wilderness series is the fact that the novels are a little too short and that they fail to explore some of the more interesting aspects of Pamela’s concepts.

+The Author

Pamela Ackerson was born in Newport, RI. Pamela has nothing but positive memories about her life in Newport which she has described as being sweet and kind and filled with fishing and history.

As a child, Pamela loved to adventure. When she wasn’t sailing, she was busy telling stories, a habit she picked up in elementary school. She often used her young brother as her audience.

She started out telling him stories just to keep him entertained. Over time, Pamela’s love for storytelling grew. By the time she was a teen, Pamela was dabbling in poetry and short stories.

It is a habit she continued to pursue even after having children. Back then, the author had her sights set on producing children’s books. However, she did not immediately pursue writing as a career.

Rather, the author turned her attention to child psychology, though the fact that she had English as a minor said volumes about where her heart was. Unfortunately for her, majoring in child psychology led her down a rabbit hole of odd jobs that took her further and further away from her publishing dreams.

Pamela remembers working in advertising, interior decorating and real estate, not to mention content editing and ballroom dancing. The author dabbled in a little bit of everything for a while before she finally came back to her first love and wrote the time traveling stories for which she is best known.

Before writing the Wilderness series, Pamela Ackerson didn’t know that she would be dealing with time travel. She just knew that the story she had in mind would involve an outsider looking into and understanding Native Americans and their culture.

Pamela intended to place Cherokees at the center of her story. But her story wasn’t coming together quite like she expected. So she started researching Native Americans and, along the way, she stumbled upon the Lakota Sioux history. It opened her eyes to a portion of American history she had never given much thought to.

And the more she read, the more she wanted to know. The more she knew, the clearer the concept of ‘The Wilderness’ became’.

Even though Pamela’s Wilderness books are short, it takes her up to a year to write just one book in the series because of all the research she has to do.

+Across the Wilderness

Karen Anderson, a doctor, gets her hands on an antique bed. She sleeps in it and wakes up in Indian Country several centuries in America’s past. There she meets all manner individuals, some of them friendly and many of them hostile.

Karen needs to stay alive long enough to get back home. She must also make sense of Standing Deer, the man that steals her heart.

The first book in the Wilderness series finds Karen Anderson undertaking the time-traveling adventure of a lifetime.

+Into the Wilderness

Doctor Karen Anderson once left the amenities of modern times to pursue adventure in the Lakota some centuries in America’s past. Now she is going back there, determined to make something of her life with her beloved Standing Deer as the Little Big Horn Battle looms.

The days of the native Americans are numbered and Karen must do her part to protect their way of life.