Wilderness Books In Order

Publication Order of Wilderness Books

This is Sara Donati’s novel, a straightforward and romance adventure. The book, Into the Wilderness, talks about a twenty-nine-year old educated Englishwoman spinster known as Elizabeth Middleton. Elizabeth travels to a remote area in the New York State to take up residence with her brother and father in 1792. It is in the adventure that she meets and falls in love with a white man raised by Native Americans, Nathaniel Bonner. What follows in the novel are Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s adventures as they flee together, elope into the Mohawk lands, and try to live a more sedentary life than Richard Todd, Nathaniel’s arch-rival. Nathaniel in this novel is portrayed as a typical romance-novel hero, handsome, strong and tall. The events take place around 19th century in the backwoods of the upstate New York State. The author shows how delicate a relationship between a Native American and an American can be.

Most of the main characters in this novel are encouraging to read it. Elizabeth is nearly as stubborn and outspoken as Claire is. But Elizabeth is at times more modern in her attitudes than Claire. Her attitude towards both the Africans and Indian people she comes across gives a different impression of a person born and raised in the 18th century, it seems for too late-20th-century-P.C. The descriptions of life among the Kahn’yen’kehaka are ones that every reader of historical books would like to read.

This novel presents Young Ian, Claire (also known as The White Witch) and Jamie as though they were real historical figures. Nathaniel describes his encounter with Ian and Claire at Saratoga in 1777. Ian fetches an English white woman, as described by Nathaniel, but later turns out to be that the woman is indeed his auntie Claire. She was brought into the camp when Nathaniel thought that they could not do much on the boy. Claire hunkers down next to Ian and after listening to his chest, she forces something down Ian’s neck and afterwards she bundles him up.

The first book in the series in called Into The wilderness. Elizabeth a comfortable English estate belonging to her aunt Merriweather. She does so to join her father and brother in a remote village with unwavering purpose and strong will to teach school. She arrives in a cold climate she had never experienced in December 1792. It is here where she met a man of her dreams, different from those she had met before. This man is Nathaniel Bonner or Between-Two-Lives as known by Mohawk people. Although Elizabeth is determined to teach all the children in the village, Native Americans, black, and white, she soon finds herself at odds with the local slave owners. She as well crashes with her own father, something that surprises her.

The financially strapped judge Middletown has his own plans for his daughter. This is betrothal to a local doctor known as Richard Todd. An alliance with Todd could save her father from ruin. However, it would raise a question to the ownership of the mountain, the Hidden Wolf. This is the land where Nathaniel, his father together with a few Native Americans not only hunts but also lives. Judge Middletown executes pressure to bear against his daughter putting her in a dilemma of choices between deception and compliance, a desire that would otherwise compromise her hard will to transformation, and a fight into the forest. The heart of the wilderness will later be Elizabeth’s ultimate destiny. This lies in the odyssey to be witnessed later: passion, flesh, and faith born, despite Nathaniel’s divided soul and own secrets.

The second book in the series titled Dawn On A Distant Score, continues the Bonner’s family post-Revolutionary War adventures. In February 1794, the fiercely independent Elizabeth gives birth to healthy twins. It is at this time when her husband, Nathaniel, comes to know that his father, Hawkeye, together with his friend, Robbie MacLachlan, have been arrested in British Canada. The frontiersman Nathaniel is forced to leave the Hidden Wolf Mountain to help his father. Nevertheless, Nathaniel is imprisoned and in great danger of being hanged as an American spy. Elizabeth, in a move to save her husband, takes off with her infants to the dangerous trek heading to Canada. She also takes Nathaniel’s pre-teenage daughter from another marriage. It is here when she discovers that the hard task to free Nathaniel requires every ounce of her inventiveness and courage. This will even go to an extent of receiving threats of loss of her children whom she loves most. The torn apart Bonners must embark on another voyage, the Scotland’s heart. A great destiny they could never have imagined awaits them here.

The New York State Bonners trades the jaded Old New World wilderness as they are forced Scotland in into this trans-Atlantic chase orchestrated by the Earl of Carryck, Nathaniel’s older cousin. The Earl is a shadow figure whom is learnt from other’s perceptions for almost the whole of the book. He is very desperate and introduces one of the Bonners as his heir. This helps him avoid his ancestral lands forfeiture. He originally covets the eldest in the Boner line, Hawkeye, but any Bonner would do which means that both Daniel, Nathaniel’s baby son, and Nathaniel himself are also at risk.

Dawn On A Distant Score book assumes that a reader has some solid background knowledge about the flow of the story and the main characters. So, it is advisable to read the first book in the series, Into The wilderness, as this story cannot be read out of sequence. This book is packed with adventure and detail. Although the lead couple discussions would at times seem emoted and have a comical feeling, the invigorating duo will charm readers most of the time. While helping bring the late 18th century to life, the support cast, at the same time, provides depth and humor. The Dawn novel stands on its own as a complex book about political and family relationship. The plot entertains the audience fully with its impressive storyline. Sara Donati is surely a master of her genre.