Lake in the Clouds

By: Sara Donati

Narrated by: Kate Reading

In her extraordinary novels Into the Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore, award-winning writer Sara Donati deftly captured the vast, untamed wilderness of late-eighteenth-century New York and the trials and triumphs of the Bonner family. Now Donati takes on a new and often overlooked chapter in our nation’s past--and in the life of the spirited Bonners--as their oldest daughter, the brave and beautiful Hannah, comes of age with a challenge that will change her forever. Masterfully told, this passionate story is a moving tribute to a resilient, adventurous family and a people poised at the brink of a new century.

It is the spring of 1802, and the village of Paradise is still reeling from the typhoid epidemic of the previous summer. Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner have lost their two-year-old son, Hannah’s half brother Robbie, but they struggle on as always: the men in the forests, the twins Lily and Daniel in Elizabeth’s school, and Hannah as a doctor in training, apprenticed to Richard Todd. Hannah is descended from healers on both sides--one Scots grandmother and one Mohawk--and her reputation as a skilled healer in her own right is growing.

After a long night spent attending to a birth, Elizabeth and Hannah encounter an escaped slave hiding on the mountain. She calls herself Selah Voyager, and she is looking for Curiosity Freeman--a former slave herself, one of the village’s wisest women and Elizabeth’s closest friend. The Bonners take Selah, desperately ill, to Lake in the Clouds to care for her, and with that simple act they are drawn into the secret life that Curiosity and Galileo Freeman and their grown children have been leading for almost ten years. The Bonners will do what they must to protect the Freemans, just as Hannah will protect her patient, who presents more than one kind of challenge. For a bounty hunter is afoot--Hannah’s childhood friend and first love, Liam Kirby.

While Elizabeth and Nathaniel undertake a treacherous journey through the endless forests to bring Selah to safety in the north, Hannah embarks on a very different journey to New-York City, with two goals: to learn the secrets of vaccination against smallpox, a disease that threatens Paradise, and to find out what she can about Liam’s immediate past and what caused him to change so drastically from the boy she once loved. The obstacles she faces as a woman and a Mohawk make her confront questions long avoided about her place in the world.

Those questions follow her back to Paradise, where she finds that the medical miracle she brings with her will not cure prejudice or superstition, nor can it solve the problem of slavery. No sooner have the Bonners begun to rebound from their losses--old and new--than they find themselves confronted by more than one old enemy in a battle that will test the strength of their love for one another. Hannah faces the decision she has always dreaded: will she make a life for herself in a white world, or among her mother’s people?©2003 Sara Donati; (P)2009 Random House

Critic reviews

PRAISE FOR SARA DONATI:

“Donati’s engaging characters, her strong sense of place and the lively escapades pull readers along.”
--Rocky Mountain News

“The author [has] a gift for capturing the history and the lives of the people of that time and place.”
--The Tampa Tribune

PRAISE FOR INTO THE WILDERNESS:

“Exemplary historical fiction, boasting a heroine with a real and tangible presence.”
--Kirkus Reviews

“My favorite kind of book.”
--Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of The Fiery Cross

Great story & characters

Love this story and narration. must have gotten a "bad download" from audible as it kept skipping ahead. Even with the issues, it's a great story with entertaining characters that you look forward to hearing from.

What a wonderful stimulating read

The author keeps me on the edge of my seat at she takes me through each book. It is a wonderful story woven in a tapestry of climaxes and emotion. Plus the education that I am getting on history is a wonderful side bonus.
I can’t wait to get to the next one.
Thank you.

Great read!!!!

I couldn't put this audiobook down! It's an excellent read, and my favorite of the wilderness series so far!! Can't wait to start book 4!

Addicting

This series of novels is gripping and addicting. Spectacular story, excellent reading. An emotional journey that is everything one wants from a novel.

Excellent!

I have loved this series for a long time, hearing the audio versions has been like hearing the pictures/scenes in my mind come to life. The narrator is wonderful!