Fire Along the Sky - Hardcover

Donati, Sara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553801465 ISBN 13: 9780553801460

Publisher: Bantam, 2004

Synopsis

With epic sweep and breathtaking adventure, Sara Donati’s bestselling saga of an Early American family’s struggle for survival in the Northeast wilderness continues with the story of an indomitable woman and an unforgettable journey of redemption across a young nation threatened by the flames of war.

The year is 1812 and Hannah Bonner has returned to her family’s mountain cabin in Paradise. But Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner can see that Hannah is not the same woman as when she left. For their daughter has come home without her husband and without her son...and with a story of loss and tragedy that she can’t bear to tell. Yet as Hannah resumes her duties as a gifted healer among the sick and needy, she finds that she is also slowly healing herself. Little does she realize that she is about to be called away to face her greatest challenge ever.

As autumn approaches, news of the latest conflict with Britain finds the young men of Paradise—including eighteen-year-old Daniel Bonner—eager to take up arms. Against their better judgment, Nathaniel and Elizabeth must let him go, just as they must let his twin sister Lily, a stubborn beauty, pursue her independence in Montreal. But on the eve of the War of 1812, an unexpected guest arrives from Scotland: It is the Bonners’ distant cousin, the newly widowed Jennet Scott of Carryckcastle. Far from home, Lily and Jennet will each learn the price of pursuing their dreams and the possibility of true love.

But it’s Hannah herself who must risk everything once more—this time to save Daniel, who’s been taken prisoner by the British. As the distant thunder of war threatens Paradise, Hannah may learn to live—and maybe love—again in one final act of courage, duty, and sacrifice.

A gifted writer, a master storyteller, and a first-rate historian, Sara Donati has written a powerful, poignant, and movingly romantic novel that chronicles the lives and adventures of a family as compelling and unforgettable as any in American fiction.

About this title

About the Author:

Sara Donati lives with her husband and daughter in the Pacific Northwest, where she is at work on her next novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter 1
Early September 1812

Paradise, New-York State
Hot sun and abundant rain: Lily Bonner said a word of thanks for a good summer and the harvest it had given them, and in the same breath she wished her hoe to the devil and herself away.

But there was no chance of escape. Even Lily's mother, whose usual and acknowledged place was at her writing desk or in a classroom, had come to help; everyone must, this close to harvest. The women must, Lily corrected herself: the men were in the cool of the forests.

She glanced up and caught sight of her mother, all furious concentration as she moved along her row. She swung her hoe with the same easy rhythm as Many-Doves. They were an army of two marching through the tasseled rows, corn brushing shoulders and cheeks as if to thank the women for their care.

For all their lives the Mohawk women had spent the best part of every summer day in the fields tending the three sisters: corn, beans, squash. But Lily's mother had been raised in a great English manor house with servants, and she had not held a hoe in her hands--white skin, ink-stained fingers--until she was thirty. Elizabeth Middleton had come to New-York as a spinster, a teacher, a crusader; in just six months' time she had become someone very different.

Lily understood a simple truth: the day came for every woman when she must choose one kind of life or another or let someone else make the choice for her. For some the crucial moment came suddenly, without warning and when least expected; others saw it approaching, pushing up out of the ground like a weed.

It was an image that would not leave her mind, and so she had finally spoken about it to her mother, holding the idea out in open palms like the egg of an unfamiliar and exotic bird.

And how it had pleased her mother, this simple gift. She sat contemplating her folded hands for a moment, Quaker-gray eyes fixed on the horizon and a tilt to her head that meant her mind was far away, reliving some moment, recalling a phrase read last week or ten years ago. When she spoke, finally, it was not with the quotation Lily expected.

She said, "There are so many choices available to you, such riches for the taking. The very best advice I can give you is very simple. You have heard me say it in different ways, but I'll put it as simply as I can. When it comes time to choose, try to favor the rational over the subjective."

At that Lily had laughed out loud, in surprise and disappointment. Who else had a mother who would say such a thing, and in such a studiously odd way? Other people were satisfied with quoting the bible and old wives' wisdoms, but Lily had a mother who preferred Kant to the Proverbs. Who made decisions with her head when she could, and was convinced that in doing so, her other needs would be satisfied.

Certainly she could point to even the most unconventional choices she had made in her life and argue that they were rational, and more than that: that she was happy with the choices she had made. As most of the other women Lily knew were happy with the lives they had.

Her cousin Kateri had chosen a husband from the Turtle clan at Good Pasture and gone with him to live among the Mohawk on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence. It was too early yet to know how well she had chosen, or how badly. Other women misstepped and struggled mightily forever after; there were a few like that in Paradise, burning bright with the anger they must swallow day by day.

And then there was Hannah, her own sister, who had chosen to leave home and chosen well, in spite of the fact that the wars in the west had taken it all away from her. Now she was neither angry nor content but merely alive, as placid and blank as the clouds overhead and just as distant.

The war was coming closer all the time, and while they had not heard a single shot fired and none of the men had gone to join the fighting--not yet, Lily corrected herself--there were casualties. Lily counted herself among them.

Without the war she would have left two months ago for New-York City. The plan had taken a full year to finalize: she would live with her uncle and aunt Spencer in their fine house on Whitehall Street and study art with the teachers they had found for her. In time, when she had advanced far enough, she would travel with them to Europe where she could study the work of the great artists.

But all of that had come to a sudden end, because men must fight and to do that they started wars. Her own brother was infected with that need, her twin brother. The strangeness of it never faded.

Many-Doves was telling a story. Lily's mother laughed in response, a gentle hiccupping laughter that meant she was embarrassed. All these years living among the plain-speaking Kahnyen'kehoka women, but her mother still blushed and laughed like a proper young English lady when the talk turned to men and women and the things they were to each other.

This is the life my mother chose. Lily repeated this sentence to herself often, and every time she was overcome with admiration and resentment in equal measure.
When Many-Doves decided the time was right they put down the hoes to eat in the shade of the birch trees. Lily filled empty gourds with water from the stream and they unwrapped a parcel of cornbread and boiled eggs and peppery radishes plucked this morning from the kitchen garden, still trailing clots of damp earth. Lily listened for a while as they talked about the coming harvest and the day's work.

When it was clear that today was not the day they would decide among themselves what was to be done to heal Hannah, Lily went off to wade in the lake, digging her toes into the mud and pulling her skirts up through her belt so that the duck grass tickled her bare calves. She wet her handkerchief and wiped her face and the back of her neck free of dust and grit, thankful for the cool and the breeze and the very colors of the sky. Lily felt her mother watching her, her love and pride and worry radiating as hot and true as the sun itself.

The sound of drumming hooves brought her out of her daydream. The others heard it too, all of them turning in the direction of the village, their heads tilted at just the same angle, listening hard.

"Riders!" Her brother Gabriel exploded out of a clump of grass almost under Lily's nose, all pinwheeling arms and legs and spraying water. Annie, Many-Doves' daughter, was just behind him and they galloped toward the women, both of them sleekly wet and naked. Gabriel's skin was burned almost as dark as Annie's, so that his gray eyes worked silver.

"Five riders!" Annie shouted as if she must make herself heard on the top of the mountain.

"We hear." Many-Doves raised a hand to screen out the sun as she looked in the direction of the village.

"Your Uncle Todd's letter said he hoped to be home today," Lily's mother said, wiping her neck with a kerchief. "But who does he have with him?" Her expression was a combination of worry and anticipation and excitement too.

"Whoever it is, they must be lost," Lily said, wishing herself wrong even as she said the words. "No stranger ever comes to Paradise on purpose."

The cornfield was on a little rise that gave them a good view of the village on the other side of the lake: the building that had once been the church but now was just a meetinghouse, as no minister seemed to want to stay in Paradise; the well; the dusty road that widened in front of the trading post and then narrowed again to disappear almost immediately into the woods; a few cabins; the smithy; here and there a curl of smoke from a chimney they could not see.

Every year Paradise was a little smaller, like an old woman hunching down into her bones. When a family gave up and moved on the cabin stayed empty and the garden around it lay fallow, simply because Uncle Todd could not be bothered to look for new tenants. At this moment the only sign of life was a cat asleep on the wall of the well, her fur gleaming in the sun. But folks would come soon enough: so many riders at once was almost as good as a fire for waking them up.

The sound of hooves on the road grew louder and louder still, and then the riders showed themselves. Five of them, as Annie had foretold. Uncle Todd and cousin Ethan among them--Lily made out that much and nothing about the others; she did not have her father's keen eyesight. Gabriel had it, though. Gabriel and Daniel and all her brothers; eyesight keen enough to count acorns on the highest branch. And now young Gabriel had caught sight of something that made every muscle quiver. He turned his head toward the women and his eyes were perfectly round with anticipation.

"Yes," Elizabeth said, answering the question he hadn't asked. "But put your breechclout on first. You too, Annie, you can't go greet people in such a state."

To Lily she said, "That will slow them down a little, at least. Come along, maybe we can get there first."

Without any discussion Many-Doves began to gather the hoes together.

"But there's six hours of sun left," Lily said as her mother moved off. She found herself as uneasy about the strangers as she had been eager to see them just a moment ago.

Many-Doves laughed and poked her shoulder with two fingers. "As if you could work now with your brother just come home."

All of the riders had dismounted but for one, a smaller figure--a lady by her bearing, Lily saw now. One of the men had a hand on the woman's saddle, his head canted up to talk to her--argue with her, Lily corrected herself, taking in the way he held himself--and in that moment she recognized him.

"Luke," she said.

Her brother Luke, come from Montreal without word or warning, and in time of war. Lily felt the shock of it in the tips of her fingers, shock and joy and a flash of fear.

Lily's mother had recognized him too,...

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0553801465
• ISBN 13: 9780553801460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 624