Into the Wilderness

By: Sara Donati

Narrated by: Jayne Atkinson

Weaving a vibrant tapestry of fact and fiction, Into the Wilderness sweeps us into another time and place . . . and into the heart of a forbidden, incandescent affair between a spinster Englishwoman and an American frontiersman. Here is an epic of romance and history that will captivate readers from the very first page.

When Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, leaves her Aunt Merriweather's comfortable English estate to join her father and brother in the remote mountain village of Paradise on the edge of the New York wilderness, she does so with a strong will and an unwavering purpose: to teach school.

It is December of 1792 when she arrives in a cold climate unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man different from any she has ever encountered—a white man dressed like a Native American, tall and lean and unsettling in his blunt honesty. He is Nathaniel Bonner, also known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives.

Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village—white, black, and Native American—Elizabeth soon finds herself at odds with local slave owners. Much to her surprise, she clashes with her own father as well. Financially strapped, Judge Middleton has plans for his daughter—betrothal to local doctor Richard Todd. An alliance with Todd could extract her father from ruin but would call into question the ownership of Hidden Wolf, the mountain where Nathaniel, his father, and a small group of Native Americans live and hunt.

As Judge Middleton brings pressure to bear against his daughter, she is faced with a choice between compliance and deception, a flight into the forest, and a desire that will bend her hard will to compromise and transformation. Elizabeth's ultimate destiny, here in the heart of the wilderness, lies in the odyssey to come: trials of faith and flesh, and passion born amid Nathaniel's own secrets and divided soul.

Interweaving the fate of the remnants of the Mohawk Nation with the destiny of two lovers, Sara Donati's compelling novel creates a complex, profound, passionate portrait of an emerging America.©2000 Jerry Stiller

Critic reviews

"One of those rare stories that let you breathe the air of another time, and leave your footprints on the snow of a wild, strange place."—Diana Gabaldon

"A powerful adventure story."—People

"Each time you open a book, you hope to discover a story that will make your spirit of adventure and romance sing. This book delivers on that promise."—Amanda Quick

"Epic in scope, emotionally intense."—BookPage

"A beautiful tale of both romance and survival...Here is the beauty as well as the savagery of the wilderness and, at the core of it all, the compelling story of the love of a man and a woman, both for the untamed land and for one another."—llan W. Eckert

"The romance of the year when it comes to transcending genre boundaries and appealing to readers who love lush historical epics or thrilling backwoods adventures."—Booklist

Wish it was unabridged...

I read the whole book after listening to it and it's a really great read! The unabridged version cuts out WAAAY too much!

great book; awful recording

The book is 300,000 words long. This abridged audio version is 50,000 long, and the reader makes a mess of the dialects. The book is great, but go for the full length version.

I can say this with complete candor, because Sara Donati is my pen name and I wrote this novel.

Great Series

altho I did listen to the abridged version, I then went a bought the book, how can you take 800 pages and jam it into 6 hrs. I love this series, and highly recommend reading them, there are 4 out now with the 5th due out in the Fall of 2006.........

Into the Wilderness

Great book!

Great book, doesn't deserve to be abridged

A rich, detailed novel like this one shouldn't be abridged. The background detail that gives the setting its atmosphere, and the thought processes that shape the characters and make them real, is omitted and all that remains is a series of events. This was a wonderful book which not only entertained me but gave me a new perspective on the people living in early 19th century America. It's sad to see it sliced up and offered as if the book consists only of what remains. Jayne Atkinson is a fine reader, but she's handicapped by the choppiness of the abridgement.