In her extraordinary novels Into the Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore awardwinning writer Sara Donati deftly captured the vast untamed wilderness of lateeighteenthcentury New York and the trials and triumphs of the Bonner family. Now Donati takes on a new and often overlooked chapter in our nations pastand in the life of the spirited Bonnersas 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 twoyearold son Hannahs half brother Robbie but they struggle on as always the men in the forests the twins Lily and Daniel in Elizabeths school and Hannah as a doctor in training apprenticed to Richard Todd. Hannah is descended from healers on both sidesone Scots grandmother and one Mohawkand 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 Freemana former slave herself one of the villages wisest women and Elizabeths 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 afootHannahs 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 nort