INTO THE WILDERNESS (The Wilderness Series Book 1)

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I found the history to be extremely interesting, especially as I've lived most of my adult life in upstate NY and have camped and hiked through many of the areas in the Adirondacks where the Bonners lived and traveled. So acting like the recovering Outlander book addict I am, I packed away my Jamie shrine (again, don’t judge), dropped out of my Gaelic classes (I was failing anyway) and Googled “what to read after Outlander”. Most of the main characters had long but defined story arcs that wove a consistent thread through the series, as several of the books focused on characters from different generations. Epic in ambition, heaving-bosomed and lavish with pioneer life, Donati's debut inevitably invites comparison to the Revolutionary War-era romances of Diana Gabaldon. But a deeper understanding of sin demands three additional categories: fear, dishonesty, and despair.

It gets more than a little drawn out near the end, which makes it the type of book you put on hold and come back to between other books.I read this as an unabridged audiobook and it seemed like tape one consisted of author thank you's and an unending listing of family trees involved in her story and I assumed I'd be in way over my head with this one.

Our main characters quickly reveal themselves to be very similar to Outlander‘s Claire and Jamie, in personality and physical description (but I’ll get more into that later). On the surface, Donati's writing seems as though it could be comparable to Gabaldon's, but, in actuality, it didn't even come close for me. Weaving a vibrant tapestry of fact and fiction, Into the Wilderness sweeps us into another time and place.Then the charm falters as their adventures are padded with details that embroider without embellishing. This is set in the New York frontier in 1793, dealing with the twenty-nine-year-old Elizabeth Middleton.

Reading ‘Into the Wilderness’ I started to think that Diana Gabaldon and Sara Donati have very different strengths and weaknesses – and it often occurred to me that one’s faults was the other’s forte.

It was at those times when I think Chekhov’s idiom of ‘leave them cold’ could have worked better, if Donati had left some motivations unsaid. I wonder how many noticed that Claire and James Fraser (from the Outlander series) were mentioned in "Into the Wilderness" story. But Kenneth Swanson’s Into the Wilderness is an inviting treatment of sin because this discussion is grounded in the notion that there is a possibility for healing and new life to be found when sin is honestly named and courageously explored in the light and love of God. Also, given that Claire and Jamie are kept so prevalent on the reader’s mind, I didn’t find Donati’s characterizations to be particularly unique.

Even the one that plays main antagonist is rather gray-shaded instead of a tar-black baddie, and with deeper motivations than thought in the beginning.The author could have built tension and developed her characters through dialogue or more thoughtful plotting. While she encounters new situation that challenge her world view, she does not convey this as a dillemma in a convincig manner. It was a case of people talking too directly and succinctly, getting their complicated messages across with little misunderstanding. Elizabeth is nearly as outspoken and stubborn as Claire is, but she is at times far too modern in her attitudes.