Lake in the Clouds

July 22, 2002
In this overly long and melodramatic sequel to Into the Wilderness, Donati continues the saga of the Bonner family as they struggle to survive in the wilderness of New York in 1802. They live on a secluded farmstead, high up on a mountain; the nearest town is named Paradise, a cruel joke for a place full of suspicious, fearful gossipmongers. Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner are solid citizens and loving parents, a kind of Ward and June Cleaver in buckskin. Hannah, a bright, courageous young woman who dreams of becoming a doctor, is Nathaniel's half-Mohawk daughter by his first wife. The plot involves all the Bonners, and their white and Indian relatives and friends, in the dangerous scheme of smuggling escaped slaves north to freedom in Canada. Add spurned lovers, bounty hunters, scheming women, colorful crackpots, racial prejudice, cruelty, murder, robbery, illicit sex, smallpox and an epidemic of scarlet fever, and 600 pages go by pretty quickly. There is little suspense, despite the smuggling plotline, and the reader is left merely to keep track of scores of characters (many of whom die during the epidemic). Hannah is the most compelling figure, as she tries to combine Indian and white man's medicines and be accepted in an insular, male-dominated profession—while also dealing with an old flame who's tracking a runaway slave. Donati's descriptions of early 19th-century medical procedures, remedies and primitive vaccination techniques are graphic and authentic. Although the story could have been trimmed by at least 100 pages, it will still please fans of soap-opera–style historical fiction.