Wilderness Run
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Book Overview
Winter 1859: While exploring the frozen expanse of Lake Champlain, Isabel "Bel" Lindsey and her cousin Laurence hear a hoarse voice call out to them, the voice of a runaway slave. The teenage children of wealthy Vermont lumber barons, Bel and Laurence decide to hide and aid the runaway. The choice catapults them from their sheltered upbringing into the central issue of their time: slavery and the future of the Union. Wilderness Run recounts their coming of age as it follows America's own loss of innocence after entering the Civil War. Two years pass and Laurence is a soldier fighting in some of the war's bloodiest battles, while Bel, in the confines of her father's mansion, begins to fall for her French-Canadian tutor, Louis Pacquette-only to see him enlist for the Union. As Laurence and Louis become friends and serve in the same brigade, Bel starts to unravel a painful family secret. The history of family and nation come together when Bel goes to serve as a nurse in Washington, D.C., and after the terrible fires of the Battle of the Wilderness, reunites with the two men who love her. Featuring vivid characters and visceral war scenes balanced by intimate portraits of domestic life, "Wilderness Run" is a powerful debut by a gifted young writer.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0312320477
ISBN13:9780312320478
Release Date:November 2003
Publisher:St. Martin's Press
Length:339 Pages
Weight:0.70 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"
Customer Reviews
5 ratings
very satisfying read
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This was the kind of book that left me thoughtful and satisfied like those books I read in my teens on Saturday mornings curled up and never going downstairs to start the day. I can't wait for Hummel to write more books. She mixes insight and poetry well. It is as if she talked first hand with those who recalled specific Civil War experiences and then wrote them into this novel.
already looking forward to the next book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This book is a welcome new addition to Vermont fiction. As the wealthychildren of lumber barons, Isabel and Laurence Lindsey are well-drawn andwithout the stereotypical traits that sometimes accompany Vermontliterature. Rather than hard-bitten, laconic types who secretly have heartsof gold, they are real young people who make mistakes and whose innocence isshattered by the events of their time. With her lyrical descriptions of thewinter landscape and her detailed knowledge of the time period, Hummel hascreated a new and fascinating world.
exciting debut
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
there are few civil war novels that stand above the crowded field. most hobble themselves with buddy-picture-like male cameraderie that fails to invoke the true spirit of an age that at least for the middle and upper middle class was more concerned with the etherial and transcendant than back slapping brotherhood. ms. hummel evokes the suffering, the dread, the gothic din and the warmth of the period better than any recent effort.
a great gift for civil war buffs who like lucid writing
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This is a good rainy weekend book, full of enough gory battles to keep youriveted and enough warm domestic scenes to stop you from feeling guilty forsipping your third hot chocolate. Beautiful writing, great historicaldetail.
great journey
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
There is such beautiful writing in this book, from the first scenes on the Vermont lake through to the last moments in the Washington hospital. I felt like I traveled so far with the Lindsey family and it will be a long time before I forget Laurence and Isabel and their experiences. Despite choosing a fairly traditional character trajectory--rich young man goes off to war--Hummel has created a deeply original story about a family shattered by a pivotal moment in our country's history. It's the details that make what she writes ring true, the soldier who carves a ship piece by piece and smuggles them out to the woods to assemble, the brutal episode of capturing a hog in the forest, and on the domestic front, a girl reciting Shakespeare at a party on the day the news comes home about the rout at Bull Run. You don't have to be a Civil War buff to love this novel, but you do have to want to escape the contemporary landscape of navel-gazing relationship books into a fictional world with grand and serious scope
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