Sara Donati · 2002 · overland

Sara Donati's 2002 novel, third of the Wilderness series. It is 1802, and Nathaniel's daughter Hannah, trained as a healer in two traditions, is coming of age in a country that will not decide what she is. A runaway slave arriving at Paradise draws the household into the business of moving people south to north, and Hannah into a city that has its own uses for her.

1. 1
   Lake in the Clouds

   High on Hidden Wolf, at the lake the family has named, Hannah Bonner works as a healer between her mother's Mohawk medicine and her stepmother's books - and a fugitive arriving out of the woods puts the whole household at risk.

2. 2
   Paradise

   Down in Paradise the village is divided over slaveholding, and the Bonners find themselves quietly running people northward - which is dangerous in a settlement where every neighbour knows exactly who came and went and when.

3. 3
   Albany

   The road south through Albany carries Hannah out of the mountains for the first time, into a state where the law on slavery is being argued over in courtrooms while the trade in people continues in the streets.

4. 4
   Manhattan

   In Manhattan she is admitted to study medicine, and finds both the science she came for and the limits set on her - a city of almshouses, fever wards and men who will take her observations and print them under their own names.