Book Review: A Light in the Wilderness

Book: A Light in the Wilderness by Jane Kirkpatrick

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

Letitia holds nothing more dear than the papers that prove she is no longer a slave. They may not cause white folks to treat her like a human being, but at least they show she is free. She trusts in those words she cannot read--as she is beginning to trust in Davey Carson, an Irish immigrant cattleman who wants her to come west with him.

Nancy Hawkins is loathe to leave her settled life for the treacherous journey by wagon train, but she is so deeply in love with her husband that she knows she will follow him anywhere--even when the trek exacts a terrible cost.

Betsy is a Kalapuya Indian, the last remnant of a once proud tribe in the Willamette Valley in Oregon territory. She spends her time trying to impart the wisdom and ways of her people to her grandson. But she will soon have another person to care for.

As season turns to season, suspicion turns to friendship, and fear turns to courage, three spirited women will discover what it means to be truly free in a land that makes promises it cannot fulfill. This multilayered story from bestselling author Jane Kirkpatrick will grip readers' hearts and minds as they travel with Letitia on the dusty and dangerous Oregon trail into the boundless American West.


Rating: 2 stars (Did Not Finish)

Review:

I thought the writing was good but it could be very bland and boring a lot of times but there were times when the story felt alive and exciting. However, the writing just didn't make me feel like I was reading a story set in the 1800s.

From the premise it seems like this would be a very interesting story that followed the lives of three different women but I found the story to be slow moving and hard to get into.

Letitia is a former slave who is now free in the 1840s but that doesn't mean she gets to enjoy the benefits of that. She was constantly treated with disdain and harsh words and flat out ignored. But unfortunately that was how times were back then. She was working for a family who were planning on heading to Oregon in search of a better life. However, Letitia had plans of her own and didn't want to travel with the family. Things didn't end on a happy note with her decision but with some help from a local farmer Davey Carson the situation was some what resolved.

So now Letitia needed to figure out what to do now with her life. For starters, she began working on Carson's farm.

Although the story mostly centered around Letitia it also focused on Nancy Hawkins and her husband Zachariah (who is a doctor) and their children as the family has decided it's time to move on to Oregon. However, Nancy was reluctant to leave.

The third person the story focused on was Betsy, a Kalapuya Indian whose name was changed by Missionaries. She was raising her grandson in Oregon and trying to enjoy the good things in her life as she teaches her grandson the best way to live as well as embrace his heritage.

Alas, this just wasn't intriguing enough for me to keep reading. I can tell the author worked hard with trying to make this historically accurate but there was no personality and life in this story. It felt very formulaic and sad to say boring. There was not enough personality given to these characters and there was nothing that made them stand out. I wanted to know more about these characters but there just wasn't enough information given.

This could have been a good read but it wasn't and I could not finish reading it.