Bride of the Wilderness

I nearly didn't read this book because I thought it was a romance and didn't feel in the mood for that particular genre. Despite my intentions of passing it on to a friend, I opened it up and decided to just read a few pages -- I'm SO glad I did! Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. I won't try to rehash the plot as other reviews have covered it nicely, but I will add my thoughts as it's an amazingly realistic and engaging read full of adventure with extraordinary writing that pulls you in where you find yourself holding your breath, at turns horrified or astonished. I found myself pulled into another world, and I highly recommend this book. Don't make my initial mistake of dismissing it lightly -- this is literature to be read and savored.

Bride starts the saga of the Christopher family which Mr. McCarry has written about in his other novels. If you like a book about adventure, family and love, this book is the book for you!! It takes you back in time and deposits you there where the sheer beauty and explosiveness of Mr. McCarry's writting will keep you for many hours!! You will miss these characters when the book is over and if you are like me, that is how you measure how good a book is!! Read this book, you will not be let down!!

. . . to take to a desert island, this would be the one. Bride starts the saga of the Christopher family and if you like adventure, espionage AND a story of faithful love rewarded, this book will surprise and please you on every page. You will be stunned by the sheer beauty and power of the writing and when you turn the last page, you will wish there was that much more.

McCarry was able to bring actual events of late 17th century English and American history to vivid life and his research into the time period is thorough. For example, I believe that he used actual events like the cold and snowy February 1690 night attack by French and Indians on present day Schenectady and the extraordinary escape of Mrs Hannah Dustin from her Abenaki captors, for the fictional attack on Alamoth and the manner of Rose Barebones escape from the Abenakis. His dreamy writing style lends itself to the way Fanny, his main character, sleep-walks through life, as if she and the virgin forests of America are waiting to be awoken to reality. This book is something which one seldom sees on the shelves of bookstores these days: it is exciting, thrilling, romantic in the grand manner of true romance (the worth of true patient love), as well as giving the average reader a taste of what life in America once was, a land filled with enormous trees, wild strawberries so abundant that walking through them was like walking through strawberry preserves, filled with danger and Indians who lived by a code of morals that only the French tried to understand. I highly recommend this book!

Excellent story - details of 17/18th century life in England and the American Northeast paint a vivid picture.