Remember the Morning

I have to be honest. This was a well written story with characters that you grow to know very well. It is enjoyable. My problem started when Malcom Stapelton stepped out of the role of a fictional character and became Robert Rogers of Rogers Rangers. To me good historical fiction gives the real historical figures their due along with some help from the fictional heros. I would still recommend it to anyone who is interested in pre-revolutionary fiction.

A very interesting novel with well-developed characters (Catalyntie and Clara especially) set in a background of profound events that lead to the founding of America. Every component of colonial life is examined--slavery, relations with Indian tribes, relations with Europe and the ensuing political conflicts, and the status of women. Clara and Catalyntie emerge from their lives as Seneca captives to choose two divergent paths--Dutch Catalyntie in search of wealth and business success, black Clara in a search of the inner peace that her external world has denied her based on race. But they both find love from the same man, Malcolm Stapleton, an aspiring soldier who struggles with his own issues of identity and belonging, religion and country. Overall a good novel, but sometimes overly dramatic and unbelievable--Catalyntie's un-motherlike behavior and Malcolm's integration into the Seneca tribe. You'll enjoy it nevertheless.

This was the book that introduced Thomas Fleming to me and I am glad it happened that way. Had I first read one of his stories related to II world war like Time and Tide, I might have stopped reading Fleming (I am not suggesting the latter category bad -- simply this is my personal preference. I enjoyed Time and Tide very much, too.)This is one of those books that give you some knowledge while entertaining you. Though I am not least familiar with the pre-revolutionary American history, this book seems to be the result of good amount of research. In spite of all the facts incorporated, Fleming had been able to sustain the reader interest throughout the novel. The characters including Catalyntie and Clara are quite interesting.

Remember the Morning was a spectular book that will keep you perched on your seat. Thomas Fleming's use of history and the characters are one I will read again and again. Fleming will open your eyes to troubles of ethinic groups, race and poltics of the time.

Near the beginning of Remember the Morning, Catalyntie Van Vorst's grandfather explains something to her: "History is always complicated. That's why it's important to understand it. Otherwise it blows up in your face." Over the next 400 pages (almost), Catalyntie lives out a story as complicated as her own roots, threaded deep into the soil of worlds both old and new. This complexity, and the refusal to settle for simplistic resolutions, is the great strength of this novel--and its greatest weakness. At its most basic, this is the saga of three people locked in love and rivalry: Catalyntie; her former slave and soulmate Clara; and the object of their affections, Malcom Stapleton, who loves Clara and feels something more and less than love for Catalyntie. Their story, splashed upon the towering canvas of the Hudson River Valley in pre-Revolutionary America, moves with the speed of a Mohawk war party and touches on themes that shaped America itself: all the inherent tensions of liberty and slavery, virgin land and the development (or exploitation) of it, simplicity and capitalism, Christianity and animism, hope and blood. Seen on one level, America is the story of rampant desire and Catalyntie personifies it. Driven and ambitious, she receives everything she wanted but happiness eludes her throughout; the peace she has arranged for herself at the book's end is still ambivalent. And the journey has perhaps been too long. The novel's major flaw is that there's simply too much in it for the length; it spans the years, continents and themes without doing full justice, it seems, to any except Catalyntie. A book the length of Gone With the Wind, or perhaps a trilogy narrated by each of the three major characters in turn, would have better suited the scope. All the same it's a noble effort that helps us remember our own "morning" as a nation.