Into the Wilderness / Sara Donati / 752 pages / First Book in a Series

This first book in the Wilderness Series is an epic adventure and history lesson all in one.  When Ms. Middleton leaves her aunt in England in 1792 to join her father and brother in a mountainous village in upstate New York, she is chagrined to learn that her father has already made plans for her future.  He wants her to marry the local doctor, Richard Todd. Todd will forgive some money owed him by Judge Middleton and he will secure title to Wolf Mountain.  Unfortunately, Ms. Middleton does not love Dr. Todd, wants to teach school, and falls in love with Nathaniel, a man straddling both white and Indian cultures.  This is an awesome story of the tenuous relations that existed between the settlers and the native Americans, the inherent goodness of man, and the incorrigible depths to which some humans sink.