Burning Sky By Lori Benton Book Review

/ / Burning Sky / /

/ / Review By Madi / /

 

Book Title: Burning Sky

Author: Lori Benton

Source: Blogging For Books

Number Of Pages: 404

ISBN: 978-0-307-73147-0

Publisher: WaterBrook Press

Year Of Publication: 2013

Madi's Rating: 5 Out Of 5 Stars

 

/ / Book Description / /

“I remember the borders of our land, though I have been gone from them nearly half the moons of my life. But who there will remember me? What I have seen, what I have done, it has changed me.

I am the place where two rivers meet, silted with upheaval and loss.

Yet memory of our land is a clear stream. I shall know it as a mother knows the faces of her children. It may be I will find me there.“

Abducted by Mohawk Indians at fourteen and renamed Burning Sky, Willa Obenchain is driven to return to her family’s New York frontier homestead after many years building a life with the People. At the boundary of her father’s property, Willa discovers a wounded Scotsman lying in her path. Feeling obliged to nurse his injuries, the two quickly find much has changed during her twelve-year absence—her childhood home is in disrepair, her missing parents are rumored to be Tories, and the young Richard Waring she once admired is now grown into a man twisted by the horrors of war and claiming ownership of the Obenchain land.

When her Mohawk brother arrives and questions her place in the white world, the cultural divide blurs Willa’s vision. Can she follow Tames-His-Horse back to the People now that she is no longer Burning Sky? And what about Neil MacGregor, the kind and loyal botanist who does not fit into in her plan for a solitary life, yet is now helping her revive her farm? In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, strong feelings against “savages” abound in the nearby village of Shiloh, leaving Willa’s safety unsure.

Willa is a woman caught between two worlds. As tensions rise, challenging her shielded heart, the woman called Burning Sky must find a new courage--the courage to again risk embracing the blessings the Almighty wants to bestow. Is she brave enough to love again?

 

 

/ / Madi's Book Review / /

 Burning Sky is a novel about a woman who was kidnapped as a young girl at the age of fourteen by Indians. She was raised as one of them and became an accepted part of their community. She even married an Indian man and had two daughters. Unfortunately, Willa's husband was killed in battle, and she lost her two darling daughters to a smallpox epidemic. Willa has decided that from now on she will live alone and care for herself. She couldn't bear to fall in love again only to have that person ripped from her firm grasp soon after. Willa is a strong woman (stronger than some men), and she is fully convinced that she is capable of taking care of herself and toiling her father's land. On her way back to her childhood home, she comes across a stranger on the road in dire need of medical care. She carries him to what once was her father's cabin and tends to him there. She soon discovers that this man, this Neil, is a doctor and a botanist, and that he has a very strong spirit. Though his short-term injuries leave him unable to help her much around her farm, he does whatever he can to ease her burden.

 

Neil realizes that once his hand and ribs are healed properly that he will be expected to leave, but with each passing day he finds that reality harder and harder to accept. He has quickly come to care for this strong, vivacious woman, and he needs to convince her that they need to be together before she puts him out on his keester.

 

~

 

This is a really good book! Once I finally sat down and applied myself to reading it (I haven't been in a reading mood lately), it hardly took any time at all for me to finish it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading as Willa defended the home that she knew for a fact to be hers. Who was behind her parent death? Who burned their barn to the ground? Who burned Willa's crops? Who tried to kill the children that she had accepted as her own? All these questions are reeling through Willa's mind as she tries to make ends-meet and keep her friends and herself out of trouble and danger. Though this book is pretty long, it's so interesting that even the slowest reader would have no trouble with finishing it quickly. I would recommend this book a thousand times over.

 

~Madi For The Literary Maidens

 

Note: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not paid to write this review, and all thoughts and sentiments expressed in this post are completely my own and totally unbiased.