From the Bookshelf of The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List…

Into the Wilderness (Wilderness #1)

Sara Donati

Start date: September 3, 2009

Finish date: September 3, 2009

Discussion: Chapter 1: Historical Fiction

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 75 topics — 276 comments total

Chapter 1: Historical Fiction

This topic has been closed to new comments.

* Bringing the Past to Life - Chapter 1 book list
By MJ , Idiot's Top libriarian · 9 posts · 696 views

last updated Jul 23, 2009 12:24PM

* The Name of the Rose by Umbertco Ecco ** book club selection: May Contain Spoilers **
By MJ , Idiot's Top libriarian · 10 posts · 61 views

last updated Jun 03, 2011 09:31AM

What Members Thought

Jun 06, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, fiction, historical-fiction, romance, ultimate-reading-list

The book had blurbs praising it from romance writers Diana Gabaldon and Amanda Quick and the trade magazine Romantic Times. Not a good sign I'd like it, if this was being marketed to those who frequent the romance aisle. The prose was more readable than most books I've read marketed as romance, even if hardly stellar, but what killed this novel for me is how it takes the "historical" out of historical fiction.

This is set in the New York frontier in 1793, dealing with the twenty-nine-year-old El The book had blurbs praising it from romance writers Diana Gabaldon and Amanda Quick and the trade magazine Romantic Times. Not a good sign I'd like it, if this was being marketed to those who frequent the romance aisle. The prose was more readable than most books I've read marketed as romance, even if hardly stellar, but what killed this novel for me is how it takes the "historical" out of historical fiction.

This is set in the New York frontier in 1793, dealing with the twenty-nine-year-old Elizabeth Middleton. Raised in England, she's come to America hoping to set up a school. New York is my own state, and the idea of a novel set there during that period intrigued me. However, two examples of a lack of grounding in the period stood out to me before the fifty page mark. The first is when a woman talks about how they could use a "schoolmarm." The fact is during the colonial and Federal period, school teachers in America were overwhelmingly under twenty-five, White and male. Not only wouldn't a person assume a teacher would be female--the feminization of the profession didn't begin until late in the 19th Century--but Miss Middleton would invariably have stirred up opposition because of her gender. Back then women weren't thought to have the authority or strength to control a classroom with children older than eight. Also, at a certain point, Nathaniel Bonner, (seemingly patterned after Cooper's Nathaniel Bumppo) calls Elizabeth a "bluestocking," and she doesn't know what that is. The term was common in Britain in the period. I've seen people poo poo this kind of criticism. It's just fiction they cry. Nonsense! Part of successful fiction is that you don't jar a reader out of their willing suspension of disbelief; and the appeal of historical fiction is the sense you're entering into another time and place, not reading about modern people in costumes.

This isn't to say some allowances shouldn't be made and some mistakes forgiven. Elizabeth Middleton from the beginning struck me as far too modern in her sensibilities--she doesn't seem to care about class or race and wants to keep her independence and remain unmarried. I'm willing to allow that; her mother was said to be a Quaker, so a reader can allow Elizabeth some nonconformity, but I could never settle in comfortably into a belief in the tale, which quickly shaped up to be a rather formulaic romance riffing off Last of the Mohicans with guest starring appearances from Jamie and Clare of Outlander and cameo roles from Jane Austen's novels. (Poor Jane Bingley, forced to appear in such a tawdry bodice-ripper.) This novel reads like really, really bad fan fiction, one that impoverishes rather than enriches the originals.
...more

95 likes · Like · see review

Jul 12, 2022 Yvette rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A sweeping epic start of a saga.
Very interesting for someone who doesn't know much about the Kahnyen'kehàka (Mohawk) or any of the other native tribes.
The romance was a bit too prevalent in the second half, but still marginally ok.
...more

Like · see review