Raleigh's Eden (Carolina Chronicles, Book 5)

This is a romantic historical novel about hero Adam Rutlege's growth from a North Carolina planter actively disinterested in entering politics in the mid-1760's to a devoted participant in the American Revolutionary cause who both loves his native North Carolina and loves the new country as a whole, as well as some of the western lands it will someday include. This is also a love story about Adam Rutledge and his neighbor, Mary Warden, who keeps her love secret from most people, as Adam keeps it secret for a long time even from himself, because of Adam's loyalty to his invalid wife and Mary's to the much older husband she married--apparently in name only--before meeting Adam. Adam and Mary's story, the early subplot involvign the Regulator movement that draws Adam into politics by giving him a specific group of people's problems to care about (a group that Fletcher deals with in _The Wind in the Forest_, where Adam and Mary make appearances), and the author's careful attention to details that appeal to the reader's senses, all kept me reading long stretches of this novel, sometimes when I knew that I should be reading other things for my college classes; it was only with difficulty that I made myself postpone reading the second half until catching up on class reading. I have since reread _Raleigh's Eden_ and again enjoyed it.