In December of 1792, Elizabeth Middleton and her brother arrive in the American colonies to join their father in the small village of Paradise, New York. After their mother’s untimely death, Elizabeth and Julian, as young children, had been sent back to England to live with her father’s sister, the inimitable Augusta Merriweather. There they had grown up, but despite all their aunt’s efforts she had been unable to find a husband for her blue stocking niece who was now a spinster at 29, while her nephew Julian had nearly bankrupted himself with his gambling and rakish ways. With the understanding that she would once again bail out Julian and pay his debts one final time, their aunt had dictated that they must leave England and start afresh with their father, Judge Middleton in the Colonies.

For Elizabeth this is a welcome change. She had been bored with the social scene in England and inspired by the books of Mary Wollstonecraft she had decided that teaching children would be her life’s work. And to that end most of the trunks she had brought with her were filled with the things she would need to start up a small school in her father’s village. For Julian, however this change is a fate worse than death and his one burning desire is to find a way out of this backwater as soon as possible.

As they approach the village of Paradise, they come across men who are hunting on their father’s lands. The men appear at first to be native American, but when they come closer, Elizabeth realizes that at least one is a white man in native Mahican clothing and he is introduced as Nathaniel Bonner. Curious as to why a white man would abandon his own culture and embarrassed by her brother Julian’s bad manners and rudeness towards Nathaniel, Elizabeth determines to find out more about him and the life of the Indians who live so close to her new home.

Within a very short time of their arrival Elizabeth finds out that her father has other plans for her. Rather than prepare a place for her to begin teaching school, he has decided that she must marry Dr. Richard Todd to save the family from financial disaster. Trying to gain time to find a way out of this dilemma Elizabeth agrees to consider the proposal but soon finds that Dr. Todd is more interested in the land, particularly Hidden Wolf Mountain which would be part of the marriage settlement, than he is in Elizabeth herself. Thrown together with Nathaniel who had agreed to build the school, Elizabeth is attracted to him and to the life of the native Americans who live on the mountain and soon her choices become very complicated.

Donati has woven many different strands of fact and fiction into this book which is the first of six in this series!  If the name Nathaniel Bonner seems familiar is it because he is a character in The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (and the movie of the same name which starred Daniel Day Lewis)  Donati is also a fan of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series which is set in the same time period and Claire Fraser makes a brief appearance in this book as well.  Donati has carefully crafted her characters and extending that care even to the supporting characters. It is obvious that she has researched the historical time period and although her plot lines are a bit formulaic, she sustained my interest with good dialogue and rich descriptions of life in a small frontier village. My one quibble is that sometimes 21st century political correctness overwhelmed the historical context of the 1700’s in ways that seemed a bit jarring. That said however, this book was engaging and I quickly read through it and am now on the third in the series!

Brenda’s Rating: *** 1/2 (3 1/2 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Marian, Sharon and Lauren

Book Study Worthy? Sure!

Read in ebook format.