INTO THE WILDERNESS (The Wilderness Series Book 1)

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Nathaniel’s hands tightened on her upper arms until she gave in and looked up, and then he held on to her gaze and refused to let her look away.

With the strain of relations among the natives, part-natives and the white newcomers, in a world where life seems to sometimes hang by a thread, Elizabeth also finds that a life in the wilderness has no end of lessons to teach her about life, love and what is worth sacrificing for. Besides pushing some people away, it attracts equivocal comparisons that can lead to equally unfair expectations. Elizabeth was a wonderful protagonist; she is hot-headed, stubborn and entranced by the Mohawk way of life. Also, given that Claire and Jamie are kept so prevalent on the reader’s mind, I didn’t find Donati’s characterizations to be particularly unique.

The cast of characters is manageably ample: not too many that you lose track of them, and some of them are well fleshed-out, on both sides. Into the Wilderness follows the adventures of Elizabeth Middleton as she makes the shift from a spinster’s life in England to life on the American frontier, circa 1792.

INTO THE WILDERNESS by Sara Donati has been an absolute pleasure to read and a experience I won't soon forget. It was a case of people talking too directly and succinctly, getting their complicated messages across with little misunderstanding. There was at least one major plot hole that kept bugging me and a few predictable events but enough surprises that I never felt I was totally wasting my time. I thought the descriptions of nature and the wilderness through which they traveled were well done, but it was hard to keep my attention on the story past the halfway point of this book.It just sucked the joy out of characters surviving horrible events only to die soon after of basic illness etc. Those new to Donati’s work would be better served starting at the beginning of the series with Into the Wilderness…—but any reader will be won over, sooner or later, by Donati’s affection for her tough, complex characters. Donati needed to have tightened up the plot in Part III especially, and edited Part II much more than she seems to have done, as those where the ones I felt were yelling for better editing. I'm perplexed as to why this series, and this book in particular, are compared to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. This book is a romance, badly disguised as historical fiction, and since the primary focus here is the relationship, frankly, there should be some chemistry between the main characters.

What she doesn't know is that her father who faces financial ruin has arranged to marry her off to the local doctor with the promise of bequeathing half of his large land holdings to her. Although the Mohawks have caused no trouble in the area for some time, there are many, including Richard Todd, who would like to see the Indians run off Hidden Wolf Mountain. Our features are original articles from our print magazines (these will say where they were originally published) or original articles commissioned for this site. I find the lead female character inconsistently intelligent, inconsistently rational, inconsistently inexperienced, and rude to her husband as a result.They seem to always know what I need when I need it-and the absolute joy, heartache, sorrow, love and hate emotions I've just gone through while reading this exceptional book is enough to last me a life time. But more than that, the storyline becomes about the frontier life – small, new communities dealing with prejudice, hardships and their own brand of claustrophobia out in the American wilds.

I loved how compelling their complex connection was; how they were drawn to each other despite all the odds, and everything they endured, fought against, and fought for. Under the pen name Sara Donati I am the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of a group of families living in upstate New York from about 1792-1825.If you've read INTO THE WILDERNESS or any of Sara Donati's other books, feel free to post your reactions here (whether positive or negative). In addition to the fact that I can't help but be charmingly amused by Donati's reference to Outlander, I paid good money for a nice, long book. I don’t necessarily regret reading it, I just don’t know if I am thrilled that I spent so long reading it to finish feeling so unfinished. His being Mohawk makes him thrillingly different, and the little bit of mystery to him makes their romance titillating and scorching.