Customer Reviews

Bride of the Wilderness (Signet)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!

This book is one that will consume you. It is a haunting tale, amazingly well researched, and with a very uncommon story line. Follow the wealth of characters and their almost dickensian development, each more vivid than the last. Fanny, although the central character, is merely the path to carry the reader through one experience to the next. This book has many dark angles ,often inherent with this level of tangibility. The contrast to your more typical novel only amplifies the life that literally courses through this book. It is well worth the time. But be warned ,it sticks with you, for better or for worse.

. . . 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.

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!!

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

I am a big fan of this author's Paul Christopher books as well as his stand alone political/spy thrillers. The Bride of the Wilderness - to put it mildly - is a departure from those novels but I still enjoyed it.

The book takes place in the late 17th Century - and regardless of the cover - is not a romance novel, although there is a love story here. The settings include London, France, America and Canada and track the lives of Paul Christopher's ancestors and their friends as they make their way from Europe to the New World. There are good guys and bad guys - and girls - and being a McCarry novel - many who are both. The scenes portrayed are brutal at times with the clash of cultures - be it French versus English or European versus Native American - at the forefront. The well developed - but not always likeable -characters in this novel are kidnapped, go bankrupt, brave the elements, travel overseas, have their towns burned to the ground and witness their friends and families murdered which all make the book sound darker than it actually is. For the story is uplifting and at times even funny.

If you are looking for an historical saga/epic look no further. Highly recommended.

Almost an invisible author, McCarry is an excellent writer, with much knowledge and detail. If you want to know the ancestral background of Paul Christopher, read this marvelous novel.