So how does a reviewer evaluate a historical that’s being marketed as a romance? As a historical, however, it succeeds rather well. So, is this novel a romance at all, or is it more historical fiction with a love story interwoven within? Thus my confusion. While most full-length historical romance novels total around 120,000 words (give or take), Into The Wilderness is a whopping 355,000 words (give or take), making it 3-times longer than the average romance you will read this month. It is on characters introduced in The Last of the Mohicans that Sara Donati has based her ambitious first novel. Such, it seems, is Into The Wilderness, and I don’t mean that as an insult.
They were lengthy, flowery in their verbiage, slow-moving in their action, and filled with protracted descriptions intended to decorate the reader/listener’s head with images. Books of this ilk were often meant to be read aloud, before the hearth, for the benefit of the entire family.
An audience where its readers lived in isolation, far apart from neighbors, who had long evenings to fill with some kind of entertaining distraction.
It was written for a different readership, one without television, movies, radio, often without newspapers or access to many books. Have you read James Fenimore Cooper’s, The Last of the Mohicans? Voluntarily? Or did you study only parts of it in the tenth grade, as I did? This classic piece of American literature is from a far different era, one we today would not recognize. But, if you’re willing to stay with me here, I’m willing to take a stab at it. I frankly don’t know what to say about this book.
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