Lake in the Clouds
#3 in the Wilderness series
-
-
4.6 • 11 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
The epic tale of love and adventure, which captured the hearts of readers all over the world in Into the Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore, continues . . .
In spring 1802 the village of Paradise is still reeling from a typhoid epidemic when the spirited Elizabeth and her beloved frontiersman Nathaniel Bonner are forced to embark on a perilous new adventure.
Nathaniel's beautiful half-Indian daughter Hannah has become a gifted healer but her decision to give refuge to a dangerously ill runaway slave puts both her family and her heart in jeopardy, as the bounty hunter tracking the outlaw is Hannah's first love, Liam Kirby.
Hannah's action sets off a chain of events that sees Elizabeth and Nathaniel undertake a treacherous journey across the wilderness, and Hannah embark on a quest to New York to learn the secrets of smallpox and to discover what made Liam change so drastically from the boy she once loved.
Along the way Elizabeth and Nathaniel must confront more than one old enemy in a battle that will test the strength of their love. And the obstacles Hannah faces make her confront questions long avoided about her place in the world – and where she truly belongs.
‘For readers who love lush historical epics or thrilling backwoods adventure’ Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this overly long and melodramatic sequel to Into the Wilderness, Donati continues the saga of the Bonner family as they struggle to survive in the wilderness of New York in 1802. They live on a secluded farmstead, high up on a mountain; the nearest town is named Paradise, a cruel joke for a place full of suspicious, fearful gossipmongers. Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner are solid citizens and loving parents, a kind of Ward and June Cleaver in buckskin. Hannah, a bright, courageous young woman who dreams of becoming a doctor, is Nathaniel's half-Mohawk daughter by his first wife. The plot involves all the Bonners, and their white and Indian relatives and friends, in the dangerous scheme of smuggling escaped slaves north to freedom in Canada. Add spurned lovers, bounty hunters, scheming women, colorful crackpots, racial prejudice, cruelty, murder, robbery, illicit sex, smallpox and an epidemic of scarlet fever, and 600 pages go by pretty quickly. There is little suspense, despite the smuggling plotline, and the reader is left merely to keep track of scores of characters (many of whom die during the epidemic). Hannah is the most compelling figure, as she tries to combine Indian and white man's medicines and be accepted in an insular, male-dominated profession while also dealing with an old flame who's tracking a runaway slave. Donati's descriptions of early 19th-century medical procedures, remedies and primitive vaccination techniques are graphic and authentic. Although the story could have been trimmed by at least 100 pages, it will still please fans of soap-opera style historical fiction.
