Tuesday Book Teaser -Sara Donati's Into the Wilderness Series

Teaser Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted by Miz B over at Should be Reading and is open to all readers who enjoy sharing their current book.

For the past few months I've been spending entirely too much time reading Diana Gabaldon's very popular Outlander series--my first foray into historical/time travel fiction. After reading the seven lengthy novels that tell the great love story of a Scotsman and Englishwoman set in Scotland, France and the American Colonies during the Jacobite Uprising and American Revolutionary War, I wanted more of this genre.

Which led me to Sara Donati's Wilderness Series. There are many similarities between the Outlander and Wilderness series--the love story between a Scots and English, memorable minor characters even with the smallest children, countries at war, strong families, the culture of the times. Sara Donati's Wilderness series begins in New York State, Canada, and Scotland. The conflicts in these six novels revolve around claims on the American wilderness by the colonists and the native American Indians, the prejudices experienced by black slaves, women's rights, and religious intolerance. Also swirling in all this conflict is the struggles for power and trade domination among the colonists, French and English which will lead to the War of 1812.

So far I've read Into the Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore. I've chosen the first novel for this week's Teaser Tuesday. If you'd like to join this meme, the directions are simple:

--open your current read to a random page;
--share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on the page, being careful not to give away too much of the story;
--share the title and author and, if you like, a brief synopsis so other readers can decide if they want to add your selection to their TBR lists; and
--post your link in the comments on Miz B's webpage before checking out other Teaser Tuesday links.

Into the Wilderness
by Sara Donati

December 1792 "Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, overly educated and excessively rational, knowing right from wrong and fancy from fact, woke in a nest of marten and fox pelts to the sight of an eagle circling overhead and saw at once that it could not be far to Paradise. All around her was a world of intense green and severe white mountains, a wilderness of deep and bountiful silence, magnificent beyond all imagining. This was not England, that was clear enough." p. 3

Synopsis: in December 1792 Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her father and brother in a remote New York mountain village. She intends to open a school for village children. Her father has other plans for her, a marriage to secure desirable wilderness property. Almost immediately upon arrival in Paradise, Elizabeth gains an unlikely ally and admirer in Nathaniel Bonner, a white man who dresses like and lives among the local Mohawk tribe. This is the story of two strong people and the life they struggle to build together in the wilderness.

I have not read ahead to see where Elizabeth and Nathaniel's story takes me over the six novels. That's one of the great pleasures of a series like this. You meet the characters and want to follow them on their adventures without knowing too much ahead of time about where those adventures will take you.

(Book collage image credit: http://alphareader.blogspot.com )