The Endless Forest by Sara Donati

The Endless Forest is the sixth and final book in Sara Donati's series. The series is set in the 1800's and involves a large family living at the edge of ruralness. It's not really necessary to read the other books before this one, but it does help with some of the background and keeping the people straight.

Its years later and Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner's children are mostly grown up and starting families of their own. Hannah is the town's doctor and little Birdie is in school, and their own Daniel has finally found happiness in pursuing Martha Kuick. Martha has a terrible mother though and she arrives in town to put a damper on things and cause trouble like she normally does. She has brought a young boy, believed to be her son, with her as well and soon shuffles him off onto the Bonners and their relations. All they want is to live in happiness, but it seems like there is always something happening in the small town of Paradise.

The characters were their old familiar selves from the previous books. Hannah was a bit more matronly and wise than she had been previously, but I suppose age will do that to a person. Regretfully Elizabeth and Nathaniel, while being in the book, don't have as large of parts compared to when the series first started and they were the main characters. The largest set of characters were Martha and Daniel and while they were compelling characters, I didn't find them as enjoyable to read about as Elizabeth and Daniel. Jemima Kuick, Martha's mother, was just as nasty and lowdown as ever.

This plot tended to meander quite a bit. It was more just the telling of what happened in a span of time and the difficulties of normal life than any one set problem that they had to overcome. Sure Jemima presented problems, but that was only part of it. I do like that the epilogue of the story was told in newspaper articles, I thought that was clever. Donati's writing is always very good and you can tell her linguistic background through the use of accents and voices for her characters. I do have to warn though that she doesn't shy away from descriptive sex in this book. If that's not your thing you may want to avoid it.

A nice ending to the series. I enjoyed finding out what happens with all the characters and putting a finish to their stories.

Book One: Into the Wilderness
Book Two: Dawn on a Distant Shore
Book Three: Lake in the Clouds
Book Four: Fire Along the Sky
Book Five: Queen of Swords

The Endless Forest
Copyright 2010
623 pages

Queen of Swords by Sara Donati

It took me a long time to warm up to this book. That being said, I do think, overall, that I enjoyed it. The fifth in the Into the Wilderness series by Sara Donati, it was only this book that I learned the authors real name. I have to say I was quite shocked that Rosina Lippi-Green was actually Sara Donati. As a linguistics graduate I am much familiar with her work there, and it does a lot to explain why the accents and "voices" of these characters are so accurate in these works.

As a bit of a recap (and possible spoiler for the previous books) we are first introduced to Elizabeth, a spinster teacher from England who has come to New York to teach the children there. She falls in love with rugged Nathaniel Bonner and elopes with him in an attempt to restore some property to its rightful owners. Next, they journey to Scotland when their twins are kidnapped and have a wild time trying to rescue them. Later on down the road the story focuses more on Hannah, Nathaniel's daughter from his first marriage and her efforts to be a doctor in a time that is not very appreciative of her talents. The fourth book brings Jennet from England to America so that she can woo Luke Bonner. The fight between the British and Americans have started and she and Hannah go undercover to rescue Hannah's brother from his captivity by the British. It is at the end of this novel that Jennet is kidnapped and forced to go South.

Queen of Swords takes place roughly a year after the last book. We are shown a continuation of what happens when Luke Bonner's wife to be is kidnapped and taken south. The book opens with her being rescued and we learn that she has borne a child to Luke in the time she has been away. This child was sent away for its safety and they must retrieve it before they can go back home.

There is a snag however, in that the man who took the child, and his grandmother are determined to keep him. Jennet steals him away and must hide in the city with some old friends until they can escape safely. To go along with this, Hannah Bonner has joined her brother in helping to rescue Jennet and her son. She falls sick in New Orleans and loses touch with everyone until gaining the help of a dashing man who is half brother to a doctor she studied under. When he decides to fight on the American side of the war for the battle of New Orleans, she engages on as a doctor to be with him.

There are many more adventures of course. This book is full of them. However, as they are more side plots I am not going to go into detail about them with this review. Suffice to say that the reader is kept on the edge of their seat throughout the whole book.

Despite this adventure though, as I said before it was hard for me to get into this book. The first part reads very slowly and I found myself putting the book down for a break a few times. However, by the time it got to the middle I was fully engaged in the story and couldn't put it down. I believe part of my trouble was that I had grown to love the characters of Elizabeth and Nathaniel, the original protagonists in this series and it was hard to read a book without them in it. Luckily though, one of my favorite characters, Hannah, is restored to brilliant description and personality in this novel. After the last I had feared that her character had been given up on and was much relieved to find her the focus once again.

Donati's writings is very easy to read. She is not heavy handed on the description, but still includes enough to give you a sense of the place she sets her stories in. My only complaint on her writing would be that I'm not thrilled with her use of letters as a means of plot continuation. I can't stand the letters for some reason; perhaps because there always seems to be more than needed and I grow tired of seeing the format.

While at first I wasn't sure I wanted to continue the series, now after finishing the book I look forward to the next one. It is supposed to be the last book and it is my hope that all loose ends will be tied up. Truly though I think Donati is up to the task and I will enjoy it greatly.

Queen of Swords
Copyright 2006
562 pages

Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati

I couldn't bring myself to like this novel as much as the others in the series. As a bit of a recap, the series starts out with Elizabeth coming to America from England to be a school teacher. A self professed spinster, she is surprised when she falls in love with outdoors-man Nathaniel Bonner. She elopes with him in an effort to not only be with him forever, but also restore property rightfully to the people who own it. The next novel is a bit down the road and she has just given birth to twins. They are kidnapped and Nathaniel and Elizabeth must travel to Scotland to get them back. From here we journey back to America many years down the road. This story is more about Nathaniel's daughter from his first wife and her learning to be a doctor despite her mixed heritage and the fact that she is a woman.

Finally in this novel yet another great many years have passed. Hannah has come back after losing both her child and her husband. Lost in spirit she only lives day to day in repitition. Lily, one of the twins is dealing with her own love life and whether she loves the dashing Scot Simon or the married man in town. She decides to go to Canada to study art for awhile and get away from everything. Meanwhile, her twin Daniel has gone off to join the war and fight. In doing so, he is captured and injured. Hannah and their cousin from Scotland, Jennet sneak in as nursemaids to help care for him and hopefully rescue him. There are some suspicious of them however, so they must tread carefully if they have hopes of saving him and the other prisoners.

My biggest complaint about this book would be the lack of writing about Nathaniel and Elizabeth. This was originally their story and it seems like they have become merely background characters in it. Also, the characters I did care about, like Hannah are not themselves. Granted she goes through a traumatic experience in this book but there was not as much depth to her character as in previous books. The characters the book did focus on, Jennet and Lily, weren't really characters I cared too much about. I would have rather heard more on the characters I was attached to already.

As far as plot goes for this book, it had some interesting ideas but I don't think they were well carried out. What happened in the novel should have been exciting, but instead dragged out rather slowly. I lost interest several times and caught myself skimming the endless "letters" included in the novel.

On another note, I do always enjoy Donati's writing style. Her background as a linguist makes the accents interesting and fairly realistic. She also includes description, but not too much that you tire of reading the book. While she does allude to some risque things in her book, they are not heavily described so even more timid readers can enjoy the book.

I'll continue reading the story of course, but I hope Donati goes back to what drew me to the story in the first place. She has a great set of original characters, and she should use them to her advantage.

Fire Along the Sky
Copyright 2004
608 pages

Lake in the Clouds by Sara Donati

I think this is my favorite book of the series so far. As a recap (and spoiler if you haven't read the first few books) Elizabeth was a spinster woman who came to America to teach school. However, she meets Nathaniel Bonner and falls in love and together they must elope and find a way to restore property back to its rightful owners, the Mahican. When this has settled they are inexplicably rushed to Scotland to rescue their twins who have been kidnapped. An earl there wants an heir and Nathaniel's son could be it. It leaves with Nathaniel discovering a long lost son who decides to go in his place and they return home to America.

This book has to deal with runaway slaves, smallpox, and other adventures. When Hannah (Nathaniel's daughter) and Elizabeth find a sickly runaway in the woods that is linked to Curiosity (another character in all three books) they know they have to help her gain her freedom and get to Canada. Hannah though is being sent by the local doctor Richard Todd to study in New York on how to give smallpox vaccinations. Though she is half Indian and a woman, she is regarded as a curiosity in New York and allowed to continue her studies. She brings the method back to Paradise with her to inoculate the people there. But unfortunately no one is ever content to let everybody bring happy and strife and lawsuits soon come along.

Donati's writing is always very clear. Luckily in this book she returns to explaining what some of her accents and different languages mean instead of leading it to the reader to try to figure out. There is plenty of description and once again it is written in the third person.

Most of the story is told about Nathaniel's daughter, Hannah, this time. I really like her character and actually enjoy hearing about her more than I do the rest of the Bonners. To be honest, I can't stand the twins. I feel that they were just used as a filler and not very fleshed out by Donati. Elizabeth and Nathaniel take a back seat in this book so their characters are also a little faded away.

Regardless though, it was an interesting book and a good look at what happened in the times back then. The issues of slavery and disease are ones that everyone is familiar with. I definitely recommend this book.

Lake in the Clouds
Copyright 2002
610 pages

Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sara Donati

I wasn't as taken with this book as I was the first one. While it promised to have a lot of action; kidnappings, rescues, etc., it was actually kind of boring. As a recap (and possible spoiler) the first book covered Elizabeth, a teacher who came to America and fell in love with outdoors man Nathaniel Bonner. Together they secretly elope so they can restore a piece of land to its rightful owners.

We are first taken to Canada where Nathaniel has gone to rescue his father and a Native American friend of his, Otter. Unfortunately he is unsuccessful and ends up locked up with them. They manage to escape, with Elizabeth on the way to help them, but then her newborn twins are kidnapped from them by a devious servant of a relative in Scotland. This uncle wants them to come there so they can claim inheritance and he can keep the land out of the hands of his enemies. They have to enlist the aid of a pirate ship to get their babies back and then deal with all the deviousness of the Carryck relative and try to get back home.

The majority of this book was spent on the boat. And honestly, while there are some things that happen on the boat, it certainly didn't warrant as much space in the book as it did. Overly lengthy descriptions actually seemed to take away from the book.

Usually Donati is pleasant to read but it this book since they are headed to Scotland, there was a lot of Scottish dialogue. Normally this would intrigue me but I don't speak Scots and it made the story very hard to follow. I feel like I lost a good bit of the plot that was told through stories from Scottish speakers and I felt a bit lost as a result. I admire her attempt to be linguistically correct but it would have been extremely helpful to include a dictionary if she was going to be that authentic. The rest of the writing, however, was in an enjoyable style and easy to understand. The book was told in the third person.

Overall the book wasn't bad, but it wasn't near as good as the first. I'll keep reading to find out what happens but I hope the next book is more interesting.

Dawn on a Distant Shore
Copyright 200
463 pages

Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati

This book was suggested to me after reading Outlander. And indeed, this book even has a recommendation from Outlander's author. However, with only a brief blurb about that famous novel's characters, I would say that this novel was more of its own than a tribute to Outlander. That being said it does fit the genre of historic fiction with a bit of romance thrown in.

Elizabeth has recently arrived from England with her brother Julian to live with their father in Paradise, New York. A self described spinster she hopes to set up a school there and teach all children. Her father however, has different plans for her and to settle some debt would like to see her married to the town's doctor.

Soon though she meets the dashing Nathaniel Bonner, a man who is half Indian in nature but good of heart. The mountain that he and his family is currently living on is a source of contention between Elizabeth's father, the town doctor, and the Bonner's as they all want it. After she falls in love with Bonner, they devise a plan to take back the mountain for the rightful owners, the Bonners. This sets loose a stream of complications and fights over the precious territory. Not even Elizabeth's marriage to Bonner can stop events from happening. They all struggle to claim a piece of this majestic mountain.

I thought the writing in this was quite good. Donati is very descriptive and definitely did her homework on languages. It was refreshing to see the native terms used and explained. While it did get wordy in some parts, it was not enough that it couldn't be overlooked. The book was written in the 3rd person. The language, while it could be considered more modern than called for for that period in history was not overly incorrect as to make it completely unbelievable.

One complaint I would have with the book is the use of borrowed characters. Donati blatantly takes and uses a good deal of character's from The Leatherstocking Tales. It just doesn't seem right to use another author's characters even if Fenimore has been deceased for quite some time. She also has cameo appearances from Gabaldon's Outlander but that is a little more acceptable as she asked permission to use them. While the characters are developed satisfactorily, it seems she could have made them unique without borrowing from other authors. Her characters all have their own distinct personalities. While she does tend to make their morals either completely good or completely bad, she does manage to throw in a few shades of grey so no character seems fake.

I did enjoy the book however, and look forward to the next installment. Its a great read with just the right amount of romance and intrigue.

Into the Wilderness
Copyright 1998
876 pages