Ride the Fire by Pamela Clare
Apr. 23rd, 2006 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksKristieJ recommended Ride the Fire to me after I mentioned that I liked the movie and book The Last of the Mohicans. I picked it up with mixed feelings: I had read and enjoyed Clare's debut Sweet Release, but her second book Carnal Gift was a wallbanger for me. I'm glad I listened to KristieJ, though, because this was a pretty good book: B grade for me.
Clare chose a time and setting that readers of historical romance seldom see: pre-revolutionary America, in what will eventually become western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.
The book opens with a scene of terrible torture -- I don't think it's a spoiler to say that, since it happens in the first five pages. Nicholas Kenleigh has been captured by Wyandot Indians and is being sacrificed. Ultimately, though, he is saved because he has caught the eye of Lyda, daughter of Atsan the war chief.
Fast forward six years. Nicholas is moving westward, a haunted shell of a man. His thoughts hints of the bad things that have happened in the past, but all the reader knows is that he eventually made it home, but left again because he felt dead inside and was a threat to his family. Enter Elspeth Stewart, pregnant widow living on the frontier of the Ohio Valley, uncertain of what her future will be. She can't survive on her own, but doesn't have anyplace else to go or anyone to trust. Wounded, Nicholas meets Elspeth and forces her to take care of him. Not the most auspicious of beginnings to a relationship.
As Nicholas recovers from his injury, he and Bethie learn to trust each other, although they are both keeping the secrets about their pasts to themselves. When Nicholas helps Bethie give birth to her daughter, Belle, he falls in love with the child. Although he doesn't plan on staying in their lives, Nicholas hangs around until they are ready to travel, since he plans on taking them to a settlement, to safety. He doesn't understand Bethie's resistance to his plan. His plan to take them to safety is blown when a small group of Indians with whom Nicholas is acquainted appear. The three of them are eventually burned out of Bethie's small settlement and are forced to struggle toward the safety of Fort Pitt, which turns out to be not so safe, since it is soon under siege.
I really liked Ride the Fire. Nicholas and Bethie are both scarred, scared people who learn to trust each other and love each other. The frontier plays an important role in the book, isn't just wallpaper, which earns Clare points in my book.
If I liked the book so much, why only a B, why not an A? A couple of things. First, I hate reading characters speaking in a brogue or an accent. Bethie's Scottish dinnaes irritated the hell out of me. Can authors not note a difference in pronunciation at the outset and then let it go? Grrr. Second, I felt like the book lost a lot of momentum in the last 50 pages or so. Lots of adventure and interaction between hero and heroine until that point, then his family and society, etc., all apppear and have to be dealt with. Bethie must angst - I'm not good enough for him, woe is me - before being convinced that he loves her despite the class difference. I'd've been happier if the family reunion had been left on the horizon, something for them to face together, and if they'd acknowledged the class/social issue rather than sweeping it under the rug, sort of.
Still, a pretty good book, so thanks to KristieJ for recommending it.
Question: Nicholas and Bethie read Voltaire's Candide to each other. Nicholas uses it to teach Bethie to read. The book is set in the spring of 1763; Candide was first published in 1759. Given the slowness of travel and communication at the time, would a copy of the book have made its way to the Ohio Valley that fast? Just wondering.
There was only one rule on the frontier—survival.
So when wounded, buckskin-clad stranger appeared at the door of her isolated cabin, Elspeth Stewart felt no qualms about disarming him and then tying him to her bed. Newly widowed and expecting her first child, she had to protect herself at all costs. And Nicholas Kenleigh threatened not only her safety, but her peace of mind. The terrible scars on his body spoke of a tortured past, but his gentle touch and burning gaze awoke longings she had never expected to feel. Bethie had every reason in the world to distrust men; the cruelty she suffered at their hands had marked her soul, though her blonde beauty showed no sign of it. But little by little she found herself believing in Nicholas, in his honor, his strength. As he brought her baby into the world, then took both mother and daughter into his care, she realized this scarred survivor could heal her wounded spirit, and together they would . . .
Ride the Fire.
Clare chose a time and setting that readers of historical romance seldom see: pre-revolutionary America, in what will eventually become western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.
The book opens with a scene of terrible torture -- I don't think it's a spoiler to say that, since it happens in the first five pages. Nicholas Kenleigh has been captured by Wyandot Indians and is being sacrificed. Ultimately, though, he is saved because he has caught the eye of Lyda, daughter of Atsan the war chief.
Fast forward six years. Nicholas is moving westward, a haunted shell of a man. His thoughts hints of the bad things that have happened in the past, but all the reader knows is that he eventually made it home, but left again because he felt dead inside and was a threat to his family. Enter Elspeth Stewart, pregnant widow living on the frontier of the Ohio Valley, uncertain of what her future will be. She can't survive on her own, but doesn't have anyplace else to go or anyone to trust. Wounded, Nicholas meets Elspeth and forces her to take care of him. Not the most auspicious of beginnings to a relationship.
As Nicholas recovers from his injury, he and Bethie learn to trust each other, although they are both keeping the secrets about their pasts to themselves. When Nicholas helps Bethie give birth to her daughter, Belle, he falls in love with the child. Although he doesn't plan on staying in their lives, Nicholas hangs around until they are ready to travel, since he plans on taking them to a settlement, to safety. He doesn't understand Bethie's resistance to his plan. His plan to take them to safety is blown when a small group of Indians with whom Nicholas is acquainted appear. The three of them are eventually burned out of Bethie's small settlement and are forced to struggle toward the safety of Fort Pitt, which turns out to be not so safe, since it is soon under siege.
I really liked Ride the Fire. Nicholas and Bethie are both scarred, scared people who learn to trust each other and love each other. The frontier plays an important role in the book, isn't just wallpaper, which earns Clare points in my book.
If I liked the book so much, why only a B, why not an A? A couple of things. First, I hate reading characters speaking in a brogue or an accent. Bethie's Scottish dinnaes irritated the hell out of me. Can authors not note a difference in pronunciation at the outset and then let it go? Grrr. Second, I felt like the book lost a lot of momentum in the last 50 pages or so. Lots of adventure and interaction between hero and heroine until that point, then his family and society, etc., all apppear and have to be dealt with. Bethie must angst - I'm not good enough for him, woe is me - before being convinced that he loves her despite the class difference. I'd've been happier if the family reunion had been left on the horizon, something for them to face together, and if they'd acknowledged the class/social issue rather than sweeping it under the rug, sort of.
Still, a pretty good book, so thanks to KristieJ for recommending it.
Question: Nicholas and Bethie read Voltaire's Candide to each other. Nicholas uses it to teach Bethie to read. The book is set in the spring of 1763; Candide was first published in 1759. Given the slowness of travel and communication at the time, would a copy of the book have made its way to the Ohio Valley that fast? Just wondering.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 02:37 am (UTC)If they don't match, well I didn't notice ;).
Book came today! Thanks, I owe ya! Add to your list.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 12:30 pm (UTC)I'm working on the list.
Ride the Fire
Date: 2006-04-25 11:00 am (UTC)Glad you liked it! I can see your quibbles, but they didn't bother me as much as it did for you. And I thought the time and setting were just so refreshing. Her latest one Surrender takes place a few years later and is pretty much the same setting.
And did you experience the same kind of *feel* as you did for the movie?
Kristie(J)
Re: Ride the Fire
Date: 2006-04-25 12:30 pm (UTC)Thanks again for the recommendation.
Re: Ride the Fire
Date: 2006-04-25 02:14 pm (UTC)And your welcome. I love sharing books I've really enjoyed and when someone else enjoys it too - well that's just the ole bees knees.
Kristie(J)