Alphabet in Historical Fiction: D is for Donati

It is time for the next letter in Historical Tapestry's Alphabet in Historical Fiction, and we are up to the letter D.  For the letters A and B I reposted reviews of books that I absolutely loved, and for C I posted reviews of Conn Iggulden's Genghis Khan trilogy, but this time I am highlighting a book that I haven't read yet, but one I am waiting for very impatiently. The book, The Endless Forest by Sara Donati, was actually released in the US last week, but I haven't seen it in any of the shops here yet. I suspect it will start to appear on our shelves after 1 February.

There are certain series that I read that I could not tell you how I started to read them. There are others that I know exactly how they came to be on my reading radar, and Sara Donati's Into the Wilderness is one of those series. I have posted previously about this (click on the link to above to read how), but to summarise, I read Diana Gabaldon's books, and then was hanging around with fellow Gabaldon fans I found out about several of my now favourite authors - Sharon Kay Penman, Paullina Simons, and Sara Donati included.

The Endless Forest is the sixth, and final, book in the Into the Wilderness series. Over the last six years I have enjoyed reading along with the Bonners of Paradise, meeting their family and friends, and along the way spending time in northern USA, Canada and New Orleans, but now it is coming to an end. Whilst I am excited at the prospect of seeing what happens next, I am also saddened to know that this is the end of the road for the characters that we have come to know and love in that time. Well, it's not really, but now they get to live their lives without having thousands of people reading over their shoulders to see what they all do next! It is even sadder knowing that Rosina Lippi (who writes as Sara Donati) has given up writing fiction for now, so there is no prospect of anything new from her pen in the immediate future either. I guess that means that I need to make more of an effort to go and track down the one book that I haven't read of hers yet, Homestead.

Maybe I am getting a bit ahead of myself in talking about The Endless Forest. I read the first four books in this series before I started blogging, and so there is only one review for this series on my blog. So here is a brief run down of the series (please note there may be brief spoilers in the descriptions for the previous books in the series).

The first book in the series is Into the Wilderness, and it was inspired by the movie Last of the Mohicans starring Daniel Day Lewis who starred as Hawkeye, which in turn was an adaptation of James Fennimore Cooper's book of the same name. Hawkeye is a character in the novel, but the main male character is Nathaniel Bonner, his son.  The story starts when a prim and proper English spinster arrives in Paradise to act as a teacher in the small frontier town. Her father has bought her to Paradise with the intention of marrying her off to the town doctor (without telling Elizabeth), but it is Nathaniel who catches her eye. Nathaniel has spent a lot of time with the Mohican, was married to a Mohican woman, and his daughter, Hannah, is half Mohican, meaning that there is an interesting mix of frontier storyline with a sympathetic portrayal of the Native American side of the story.

Ana recently reviewed Into the Wilderness over at Historical Tapestry.

The second book in the series is Dawn on a Distant Shore, and the action starts up not long after Into the Wilderness ends. Nathaniel and Elizabeth are now married, and Elizabeth gives birth to twins whilst she is accompanied only by her step-daughter Hannah. Nathaniel has gone to Canada to try and release his father who has been arrested by the British, but finds himself captured as well. Elizabeth now needs to go and get them both, and through a series of events, does so, but then the family finds themselves headed to Scotland, where a distant relative, the Earl of Carryck, has a mind to manipulate the family into doing what he wants to do.

A lot of this book is set on board a boat, and in Scotland. One of the most important things in this novel is the introduction of the character of Jennet, headstrong and beautiful, who plays an influential role in future books.

The third book, Lake in the Clouds, see the Bonners return to their home on Hidden Wolf Mountain, near the small town of Paradise, and the book is better because of the return to the original setting.

This book sees Hannah come to the fore as a character as she tries to find her place in a society where she is not fully white, and not fully Mohican. Her journey towards adulthood is further complicated by the fact that she wants to be a doctor. It is almost unheard of for a young woman to be a doctor, let along a young Native American woman.

Other themes in the book include the smuggling of slaves to freedom in Canada, and facing the dangerous men who chase those slaves, including a face from the past.

The fourth book in the series is Fire Along the Sky, sees Hannah once again playing a starring role, but also the twins come into age. Lily is another headstrong and beautiful young woman who wants to get out of Paradise and see the world, but the beginning of the 1812 war has interrupted those plans.

Ten years have elapsed between these two books, and there have been many changes, most notably for Hannah. In this book, Hannah is a shadow of her former self, having undergone enormous personal tragedy. It is only in caring for others that she is able to undergo some personal healing, and begins to find purpose and fulfillment.

The war looms large in this book, with Lily's twin Daniel enlisting to fight, only for fate to once again find a Bonner imprisoned in Canada. With the colourful Jennet back in the story, and yet more surprises in store, this is another good read.

The fifth book in the series, and in my opinion, the most satisfying, Queen of Swords, sees a lot of the action moving away from Paradise to New Orleans, where the 1812 War continues. This book starts at a rapid pace with the Bonners headed to New Orleans in pursuit of the kidnapped Jennet.

The highlight of this book character wise was definitely Ben Savard, a man who knows everyone, who can get things done, and who seems to have the key to Hannah's heart. If there is one thing that I am looking forward to in The Endless Forest it is getting to see Ben again!

This is the one Wilderness book that I have reviewed, so if you are interesting, click on the link to read more.

So there you have it, a brief journey through the Into the Wilderness series by Sara Donati, and my entry for D in the Alphabet in Historical Fiction challenge being hosted by Historical Tapestry. Writing this post has achieved two things. The first is to make me more eager to read The Endless Forest, an experience I am sure will be bitter sweet, and the second is to make me want to reread the series from the beginning!

Seeing as I wanted to highlight The Endless Forest, it seems only fitting to share the synopsis, as the closing part of this post.

With a master storyteller’s skill and a historian’s precision, Sara Donati has delighted readers and critics alike with her bestselling novels of the nineteenth-century New York frontier. Now she brings us The Endless Forest, set in the remote village of Paradise, where the Bonner family that readers first met in Into the Wilderness make their home.

The spring of 1824 is a challenging one for the inhabitants of Paradise N.Y. when a flood devastates the village. But for Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner, it’s also a time of reunion as their children return from far-off places: Lily and her husband from Italy, and Martha Kirby, the Bonners’ ward, from Manhattan. Although Lily is nursing her own grief, it is Martha, fleeing a crushing humiliation, who brings with her trouble that will reverberate in all their lives.

In the sudden peace that follows the storm, as families struggle to rebuild, childhood friends Martha and Daniel, Lily’s twin brother, suddenly begin to see each other in a new light. But their growing bond is threatened when Martha’s mother arrives back in Paradise a decade after abandoning her daughter. Jemima Southern is a dangerous schemer who has destroyed more than one family, and her anger touches everyone, as do her secrets. Has Jemima come to claim her daughter–or does she have something else in mind? Whatever happens, Martha and Daniel and all the Bonners must stand united against the threats to both heart and home.

Painful secrets and hidden sorrows, joy, heartbreak, and passion follow the Bonners through a season of change and renewal. A rich, passionate, multilayered portrayal of family strength and endurance in a fascinating place and time, The Endless Forest will be remembered long after the last page is turned.

I can't wait to read it!

A little of this and a little of that!

I have a few different things I wanted to post about, so this is going to be a post with several different things in it.

First, Rosina Lippi/Sara Donati has a new excerpt up for book six of the Into the Wilderness series. This series is one of my favourites and I am very much looking forward to the new book when it comes out!

Speaking of excerpts, Jennifer Crusie has posted the whole first chapter of Dogs and Goddesses, her upcoming collaboration with Lani Diane Rich and Anne Stuart. Whilst I prefer her non-collaboration books it is fair to say that I will be reading this one when it comes out!

The second thing is that I got a blog award from Teddy Rose at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time. I'd like to thank my parents, my sister, my friends, my agent...wait..I don't have an agent.

In the spirit of sharing, I would like to pass this award onto Ana from Aneca's World, in recognition of all her hard work on Historical Tapestry, and because she is a great person!

The second person who I would like to award this to is Dewey from Hidden Side of a Leaf. Now Dewey may be surprised to get this from me because we haven't interacted personally all that often, but she always is really active in trying to build up our little bookish corner of the blogosphere with lots of fun ideas! I don't always participate, but I do always admire her energy and her ideas. Great job Dewey.


Speaking of Dewey and her great ideas, we needed to do a follow up post about this week's Weekly Geeks idea, which was to spread the link love around by sharing our links to book reviews that we had in common with other bloggers.

Initially, I was reluctant to undertake this one, because I was worried about how much extra time this would take on an ongoing basis. When I thought about it a bit more, I decided to go ahead with it because, whilst there was definitely a lot of time spent on it this week find book reviews in common and leaving comments and the like, going forward it should actually be pretty manageable I think. What I have also spent more time on this week is reading more new blogs in Bloglines, as I find more and more book bloggers who are also participants in Weekly Geeks!

Queen of Swords by Sara Donati

It is the late summer of 1814, and Hannah Bonner and her half brother Luke have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke’s wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet’s rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they’d hoped for. In the spring she had given birth to Luke’s son, and in the summer Jennet had found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in the hope of keeping him safe.

To claim the child, Hannah, Luke, and Jennet must journey first to Pensacola. There they learn a great deal about the family that has the baby. The Poiterins are a very rich, very powerful Creole family, totally without scruple. The matriarch of the family has left Pensacola for New Orleans and taken the child she now claims as her great-grandson with her.

New Orleans is a city on the brink of war, a city where prejudice thrives and where Hannah, half Mohawk, must tread softly. Careful plans are made as the Bonners set out to find and reclaim young Nathaniel Bonner. Plans that go terribly awry, isolating them from each other in a dangerous city at the worst of times.

Sure that all is lost, and sick unto death, Hannah finds herself in the care of a family and a friend from her past, Dr. Paul de Guise Savard dit Saint-d’Uzet. It is Dr. Savard and his wife who save Hannah’s life, but Dr. Savard’s half brother who offers her real hope. Jean-Benoit Savard, the great-grandson of French settlers, slaves, and Choctaw and Seminole Indians, is the one man who knows the city well enough to engineer the miracle that will reunite the Bonners and send them home to Lake in the Clouds. With Ben Savard’s guidance, allies are drawn from every segment of New Orleans’s population and from Andrew Jackson’s army, now pouring into the city in preparation for what will be the last major battle of the War of 1812.

This book is the fifth book in the Into the Wilderness series by Sara Donati. The series in order is:

Into the Wilderness
Dawn on a Distant Shore
Lake in the Clouds
Fire in the Sky
Queen of Swords

Like many other readers of this series that I have chatted with over time, I first read these books after I read the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and wanted to read something else with a similar time frame. While I liked the first book, I think that my enjoyment of the series has been building and building, and Queen of Swords continued that trend. It was a very, very good read.

As I have mentioned before, I have a lot of reading time when I am on the train commuting to and from work, and normally whenever I finish a book I have the next book I am going to read already in my bag. I finish one book, and pick up the next straight away. When I finished this one, I picked up the next book, but couldn't start reading....I needed some time to actually revel in the reading experience that I had just had. Reading on the train also means that I laughed out loud, and teared up several times throughout the book in public!

The book opens with Luke trying to rescue his fiancee from a man who kidnapped her nearly a year before. Accompanying Luke is his half sister, Hannah, a soldier by the name of Kit Wyndham and a group of loyal men. Rescuing Jennet, they find that in order to protect him, Jennet has given their son to a man by the name of Honore Poiterin, asking him to take him away from her prison like island. Now, the Bonners must try to get their son back, and their journey takes them to Pensacola and then to New Orleans.

The Poiterins have taken the baby and spread the story that he is the son of Honore himself, and they are not going to give him up without a fight. The Poiterin's are one of the Creole first families in New Orleans, and they have many allies, meaning that it is not always going to be a fair fight either.

As Jennet becomes more and more desperate to regain custody of her son, and as Luke and Jennet try to rebuild their relationship after the traumatic events of the past year, they find themselves having to make allies in a city where there is much uneasiness, for it is 1812 and the war between the English and the Americans is right on their doorsteps.

I have to confess that I know very little about the war of 1812, although I have read a couple of books that are set around that time. I certainly had no idea that there was so much fighting around New Orleans. I guess I just assumed that most of the fighting occurred on the East Coast and didn't really spread all that far from there.

The highlight for me in this book was getting to know Ben Savard, and seeing the way that he helped Hannah move forward with her life, without disrespecting her past or dominating her present. It was an interesting parallel to me that even though he too was biracial like Hannah, that one of the biggest traits that they shared was that they both had been bought up and accepted by their respective families, in stark contrast to the treatment of some others like them. To an extent these relationships were also reflected by society as a whole, with Hannah finding it much harder to exist in the city of New Orleans than she normally did.

By moving the action away from Paradise (where most of the other books take place), Sara Donati has managed to bring a completely different feel to this book, without losing any of the integrity of any of the characters. Whilst many of the characters we have come to love in previous books were offstage during this novel, we did get glimpses of them through the letters that were received, and there was a welcome cameo from Nathaniel and Running Bears as well.

I really do recommend reading this series if you enjoy historical fiction set in the early days of the US.

Sara Donati is just starting to work on the sixth book in this series, and I for one cannot wait to read it. In the meantime I am so tempted to actually reread the whole series....and I don't really do rereads normally!

Rating 4.5/5