Post by Charlynn on Sept 3, 2012 17:24:23 GMT -5
Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati
We live in a world of convenience, of global communication, of safety and security. While the wonder and benefits of modern technologies cannot be argued with, they do tend to make everything smaller – the world and the dangers within it, the necessities of life less immediate, and, therefore, life has become less adventurous over the decades, and centuries, and millenniums. Excitement is now manufactured, not natural and certainly not often life and death in nature. However, this is not the case in Donati's novel Into the Wilderness set following the American Revolution in the year 1793. When Elizabeth Middleton – privileged daughter and self-proclaimed spinster – comes to upstate New York to live with her judge father with the ambition of starting her own school, she is thrust into more than just the unknown of a new country and home; she falls in love... which is perhaps the greatest wilderness of all.
Paradise, New York – Elizabeth's new town of residence – is tiny in its population but large in its complexities. Fueled by decades of racial mistrust towards the local Indians – most of whom have been driven off or killed – and still tainted by slavery, Elizabeth arrives only to find herself immediately caught in a battle over that which all in Paradise hold most dear: land. Between the dangers of life in the bush and the dangers of the men who claim and inhabit it, Elizabeth embarks upon an adventure we today can only dream of... and of course live vicariously through by reading books. It is no wonder beloved author Diana Gabaldon endorses Donati's work and allows her own legendary characters – Jamie and Claire Fraser – to make cameos.
Donati's Into the Wilderness – all 876 pages of it – is a novel that can't be put down, yet, at the same time, as it nears its end, the reading pace slows and longer moments of contemplation and appreciation are taken, because to finish the book is to stop living in a way. While only a year's time passes, emotional lifetimes are felt during those twelve months. The experiences endured, the triumphs enjoyed, the lives lost, and the new lives created – all of this combine to allow a type of time travel for the reader, a brief glimpse into a world only available now in the pages of books.
Oftentimes, when authors present works of such length as Into the Wilderness, they tend to get too bogged down in the details, too introspective, and they can lose sight of their characters – the weight of their work eclipsing their voice, but this is not the case with Donati's novel. Just as one would expect life to be in 1793, there is a sense of urgency crackling through the book's many pages. Despite the novel's physical scope – crossing continents (in recollection and retelling) and crossing thousands of acres of land (in actuality), there's still an intimacy to Into the Wilderness, mainly because the author doesn't use the modern contrivances of triangles and misunderstandings to keep her lovers separated until the very end of the book. She shows a true understanding of the fact that finding love shouldn't be the adventure; it's keeping it – together – one hardship, one joy at a time, and, because every relationship is unique, that journey is always into uncharted territory – a wilderness, no less beautiful and dangerous than that of an untamed land. While the novel (too quickly) comes to end, the adventure of Into the Wilderness does not – neither literally or figuratively. Rather, it will Dawn on a Distant Shore... soon.
Five out of Five Stars
We live in a world of convenience, of global communication, of safety and security. While the wonder and benefits of modern technologies cannot be argued with, they do tend to make everything smaller – the world and the dangers within it, the necessities of life less immediate, and, therefore, life has become less adventurous over the decades, and centuries, and millenniums. Excitement is now manufactured, not natural and certainly not often life and death in nature. However, this is not the case in Donati's novel Into the Wilderness set following the American Revolution in the year 1793. When Elizabeth Middleton – privileged daughter and self-proclaimed spinster – comes to upstate New York to live with her judge father with the ambition of starting her own school, she is thrust into more than just the unknown of a new country and home; she falls in love... which is perhaps the greatest wilderness of all.
Paradise, New York – Elizabeth's new town of residence – is tiny in its population but large in its complexities. Fueled by decades of racial mistrust towards the local Indians – most of whom have been driven off or killed – and still tainted by slavery, Elizabeth arrives only to find herself immediately caught in a battle over that which all in Paradise hold most dear: land. Between the dangers of life in the bush and the dangers of the men who claim and inhabit it, Elizabeth embarks upon an adventure we today can only dream of... and of course live vicariously through by reading books. It is no wonder beloved author Diana Gabaldon endorses Donati's work and allows her own legendary characters – Jamie and Claire Fraser – to make cameos.
Donati's Into the Wilderness – all 876 pages of it – is a novel that can't be put down, yet, at the same time, as it nears its end, the reading pace slows and longer moments of contemplation and appreciation are taken, because to finish the book is to stop living in a way. While only a year's time passes, emotional lifetimes are felt during those twelve months. The experiences endured, the triumphs enjoyed, the lives lost, and the new lives created – all of this combine to allow a type of time travel for the reader, a brief glimpse into a world only available now in the pages of books.
Oftentimes, when authors present works of such length as Into the Wilderness, they tend to get too bogged down in the details, too introspective, and they can lose sight of their characters – the weight of their work eclipsing their voice, but this is not the case with Donati's novel. Just as one would expect life to be in 1793, there is a sense of urgency crackling through the book's many pages. Despite the novel's physical scope – crossing continents (in recollection and retelling) and crossing thousands of acres of land (in actuality), there's still an intimacy to Into the Wilderness, mainly because the author doesn't use the modern contrivances of triangles and misunderstandings to keep her lovers separated until the very end of the book. She shows a true understanding of the fact that finding love shouldn't be the adventure; it's keeping it – together – one hardship, one joy at a time, and, because every relationship is unique, that journey is always into uncharted territory – a wilderness, no less beautiful and dangerous than that of an untamed land. While the novel (too quickly) comes to end, the adventure of Into the Wilderness does not – neither literally or figuratively. Rather, it will Dawn on a Distant Shore... soon.
Five out of Five Stars