A Light in the Wilderness, Jane Kirkpatrick
A Light in the Wilderness, Jane Kirkpatrick
1 Rating(s)
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A Light in the Wilderness

Author: Jane Kirkpatrick

Narrator: Karen Chilton

Unabridged: 10 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 09/02/2014

Synopsis

Letitia holds nothing more dear than the papers that prove she is no longer a slave. They may not cause white folks to treat her like a human being, but at least they show she is free. She trusts in those words she cannot read--as she is beginning to trust in Davey Carson, an Irish immigrant cattleman who wants her to come west with him. Nancy Hawkins is loathe to leave her settled life for the treacherous journey by wagon train, but she is so deeply in love with her husband that she knows she will follow him anywhere--even when the trek exacts a terrible cost. Betsy is a Kalapuya Indian, the last remnant of a once proud tribe in the Willamette Valley in Oregon territory. She spends her time trying to impart the wisdom and ways of her people to her grandson. But she will soon have another person to care for.

About Jane Kirkpatrick

Jane Kirkpatrick is the author of twenty books and is a two-time winner of the WILLA Literary Award. Her first novel, A Sweetness to the Soul, won the Western Heritage Wrangler Award, an honor given to writers such as Barbara Kingsolver and Larry McMurtry. For twenty-six years she "homesteaded" with her husband Jerry on a remote ranch in Eastern Oregon.  She now lives with Jerry, and her two dogs and one cat on small acreage in Central Oregon while she savors the value of friendship over fame.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Shari on January 18, 2015

This novel is based on the life of a real woman, Letitia Carson, a freed black woman, who traveled the Oregon Trail during the 1840's along with her Irishman husband, Davey, to settle into Oregon Territory to make new lives for themselves and raise a family. Letitia holds the dear the papers that pro......more

Goodreads review by Tara on October 27, 2014

It's pre-Civil War. There's nothing more treasured to a Negro than "free papers". Unless they get in the wrong hands or a "hunter" tears them up. Letitia has these papers. She plans to take these papers all the way to Oregon with her white husband. Yep. You read correctly. But sadly, it wasn't legal......more

Goodreads review by Dana on October 02, 2014

Some of the best historical fiction books are those based on true stories. The author's note at the end of this amazing and astonishing story impressed me. Jane Kirkpatrick surely knows how to tell a story and stick with the facts! Letitia Carson is clearly the main character in this novel. Her story......more

Goodreads review by Kathryn on December 29, 2014

A Light in the Wilderness is a work of fiction based on the African American woman Letitia Carson who lived in the nineteenth century. It is a very inspiring story and left me in awe of women who lived at that time firstly, and then Letitia herself, Black African in a time where many were still slav......more

Goodreads review by Linda on December 17, 2014

In A Light in the Wilderness, the reader is taken on a journey West along the Oregon Trail, experiencing the drama mainly from the eyes of a Letitia, a free, Black woman travelling with her White husband. Letitia was a real person, but her narrative is fictionalized. The author, Jane Kirkpatrick, in......more

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