The Week of Monday, May 28, 1838
We have received word of a steamboat accident on the Hudson River which has taken the lives of two of our citizens. Ethan and Callie Middleton were returning home from Manhattan when the Steamboat Reliance was rocked by an explosion and sank almost immediately. There were no survivors.
Nicholas Wilde, Callie’s half brother and Ethan’s partner, traveled to Albany to bring the bodies home to Paradise for burial. He was accompanied by Levi Fiddler.
The Middletons were much admired by their friends and neighbors, and dearly loved by the families they leave behind. Ethan was responsible for the revitalization of Paradise by means of careful planning, innovative design, and meticulous building practices. While they had no children of their own, the Middletons took in the five children left behind when Ethan’s cousin Jennet Scott Bonner died in the typhoid epidemic of 1830.
They leave behind Nathan, Adam, and Alasdair Scott-Bonner, Mariah Mayfair, and Isabel March, their spouses and children, as well as grieving aunts, uncles, and cousins.
PARADISE SUN
Light for All
Tuesday, May 5, 1840
Gabriel Bonner was in town today and stopped by the newspaper office to announce that his wife, Annie, has given birth to their fourth child and second daughter, who will be called Carrie. With such unanticipated incentive, Gabriel plans to move ahead quickly with the plans to rebuild the old homestead at Lake in the Clouds.
We are delighted to announce that Curiosity Bonner, better known to us here in Paradise as Birdie, is newly married to Henry Savard of New Orleans, and further that the young couple, both certified physicians, will be coming to Paradise to take up residence. They will join Hannah Savard’s practice, which has long been stretched to its limits.
Henry Savard is the nephew of our own Ben and Hannah Savard of Downhill House.
Please join us in welcoming Birdie and Henry home.
It is our understanding that Becca LeBlanc, widow and innkeeper, intends to sell the Red Dog to her daughter Anje and Anje’s husband Jeremy Reed. We wish Mrs. LeBlanc well in her hard-earned retirement, and Anje and Jeremy on their new business venture.
PARADISE SUN
Light for All
Friday, October 22, 1841
Mrs. Lily Ballentyne is returned from Boston where a selection of her drawings and watercolors were on display at the establishment of Messers Johnstone, Purveyors of Fine Art. The event was mentioned in both Boston and Manhattan newspapers, as Mrs. Ballentyne’s work is in great demand.
Mrs. Ballentyne, who was widowed last year, was accompanied by her mother and father, Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner. The Ballentynes’ four daughters joined the family party in Boston. During this trip Mrs. Elizabeth Bonner’s second collection of essays was first offered for sale at Boston bookstores. Copies are available for sale in the Paradise Sun office.
PARADISE SUN
Light for All
Wednesday September 27, 1843
OBITUARY
At sunset on Thursday, June 15 of this year, after a particularly beautiful autumn day, the town of Paradise lost one of its leading, most respected and admired citizens.
Nathaniel Bonner died at Downhill House, the home he shared with his wife Elizabeth and his daughter Dr. Hannah Savard, son-in-law Ben Savard, and their family. All the Bonner children and many of the grandchildren (all of whom he still referred to as Little People) were with him. His mind remained clear until the very end. He was eighty-five years old.
The son and only surviving child of Daniel (Hawkeye) Bonner and Cora Munro Bonner, two of the town’s founders, he was born and raised at the family home at Lake in the Clouds. Later in life he moved in to the home known as Uphill House, originally owned by his father-in-law, Judge Alfred Middleton. For the past ten years he and Elizabeth have been living with their daughter Hannah and her family at Downhill House.
Nathaniel fought in two wars and returned home to take up trapping and hunting, skills he learned from his father and grandfather. Like his father before him, Nathaniel was a marksman of astounding skill.
His first wife, Sarah, bore him three children, of whom only Hannah survived. Some eight years after Sarah’s death he married Elizabeth Middleton, with whom he lived in harmony for the rest of his life.
Nathaniel is survived by Elizabeth, by his children Luke, Hannah, Lily, Daniel, Gabriel, and Birdie, and their spouses, by twelve grandsons and eleven granddaughters, and eight great-grandchildren, and by many friends. He was preceded in death by his parents, his infant sister Alice, his first wife Sarah, his infant children James, Robert, Michael, and Emmanuel, his daughter-in-law Jennet Scott Bonner, son-in-law Simon Ballentyne, and his granddaughters Mairead Ballentyne and Fiona Scott Bonner.
On the last day of his life, Nathaniel rose at dawn and spent a full day helping his grandsons make repairs to the meetinghouse. In the evening he ate alone with his wife, a simple meal of soup, cornbread, and cobbler made with the first apples of the season.
PARADISE SUN
Light for All
January 1, 1844
As all of Paradise’s citizens are aware by now, Mrs. Elizabeth Middleton Bonner passed away yesterday after a short illness. She was eighty-one.
Mrs. Bonner left explicit instructions that she wanted no obituary, and requested instead that we print this statement written by her own hand on the day before her death. As a lifelong author of hundreds of editorials, articles, and essays on politics, education, abolition, and the rights of women that appeared in newspapers all over England and the United States, we at the Paradise Sun—the only newspaper she founded—are honored to comply.
30th December in the Year 1843
To my dear family and friends,
The facts of my life are well known to those who have reason to be interested in such things and need not be recorded again here.
My life, as extraordinarily full and happy as it has been, did not truly begin until December of 1792, when I arrived in Paradise and met Nathaniel. Neither of us will ever leave you as long as you remember our stories and pass them on. I relegate this right and responsibility to our children and grandchildren, who brought both of us great joy and fulfillment.
I trust you will miss me, but I hope you will not mourn me for long. Each day is unique and precious, a coin to be spent thoughtfully. Waste nothing and your regrets will be few.
The young cannot imagine death and for that reason they fear it. I am not afraid of death. I greet it as anyone who has a long and satisfying day’s work behind them greets sleep.
I have loved the stars too well to fear the night.
Elizabeth Middleton Bonner
Author’s Note
When I was writing Fire Along the Sky, the fourth novel in this series, I asked Diana Gabaldon if she had found the fourth in her Outlander series hardest.
No, she shot back immediately. The fifth is.
She was, of course, writing her fifth at the time. This is more evidence of a phenomenon well known to those who make a living telling stories: Fiction writing is one of the few things you can do with your life that doesn’t get easier as you go along. To provide balance to that unfortunate truth, the writing of fiction is enormously satisfying after the fact.
At the end of this series I am as confident as I can be that I have told Elizabeth’s story, but I also find myself confronted with an unavoidable truth: I cannot possibly name all the people who have helped me in one way or another along the line. In the sure knowledge that I am leaving out many who deserve to be mentioned here, I would like to thank:
my editors at Bantam, first Wendy McCurdy and then Shauna Summers, and Nita Taublib, who stuck with the story when it wasn’t clear it would ever take off;
my agent, Jill Grinberg, my own personal buoy in the rough seas of publishing;
Jill’s kids, for giving me a reason to spend time thinking about monkeys;
the librarians and researchers and experts who took time to ans
wer often ridiculous questions, or to point me in the right direction to find those answers for myself;
Pokey Bolton, the very first reader to ever introduce herself to me, for her enthusiasm and early support;
Lynn Viehl, who read this manuscript again and again and never threw it at me—her help was invaluable;
Kaera Hallahan, wherever she disappeared to, for encouragement at a crucial juncture;
Penny and Suzanne, the best accidental sisters ever;
the other participants at the now defunct CompuServe Writers Forum, who were by turns blindly supportive and constructively critical;
Rachel Gorham, for her help with matters technical and not-so;
Judith Henrickson, for her tireless work on the Wilderness Wiki;
the editors at Baronage Press, most especially William, for the back-story research that made Dawn on a Distant Shore more historical than fantastical;
Kathy Jones, genealogy queen, who made sense of the Wilderness universe in ways that were endlessly helpful and sometimes surprising;
Katey Burchette, who runs a book-discussion website with unparalleled panache and exactitude;
dozens of other regular visitors and commenters at my author weblog, including but not limited to Pam Shaw, Rachel Auclair, Carol Baughman, Bruce McCorrister, Kenzie, Robyn-the-MySpace-guru, Meredith Rigter;
the original Women of the Wilderness from the first discussion board.
Thank you, one and all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARA DONATI is the pen name of Rosina Lippi, under which she won the PEN/Hemingway Award for her novel Homestead. The first five novels in the Wilderness series—including Into the Wilderness, Dawn on a Distant Shore, Lake in the Clouds, Fire Along the Sky, and Queen of Swords—have more than one million copies in print.
The Endless Forest is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Sara Donati
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Donati, Sara.
The endless forest : a novel / Sara Donati.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33902-1
1. New York (State)—History—1775–1865—Fiction. 2. Families—Fiction.
3. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction.
5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.O46923E53 2010
813′.54—dc22 20009035381
www.bantamdell.com
Map by Laura Hartman Maestro
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
Sara Donati, The Endless Forest
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