BLOGWORDS – Tuesday 29 August 2017 – TUESDAY REVIEWS-DAY – NEW RELEASE EVENT – MANY SPARROWS by LORI BENTON
TUESDAY REVIEWS-DAY – RELEASE DAY EVENT – MANY SPARROWS by LORI BENTON
Either she and her children would emerge from that wilderness together, or none of them would…
In 1774, the Ohio-Kentucky frontier pulses with rising tension and brutal conflicts as Colonists push westward and encroach upon Native American territories. The young Inglesby family is making the perilous journey west when an accident sends Philip back to Redstone Fort for help, forcing him to leave his pregnant wife Clare and their four-year old son Jacob on a remote mountain trail.
When Philip does not return and Jacob disappears from the wagon under the cover of darkness, Clare awakens the next morning to find herself utterly alone, in labor and wondering how she can to recover her son…especially when her second child is moments away from being born.
Clare will face the greatest fight of her life, as she struggles to reclaim her son from the Shawnee Indians now holding him captive. But with the battle lines sharply drawn, Jacob’s life might not be the only one at stake. When frontiersman Jeremiah Ring comes to her aid, can the stranger convince Clare that recovering her son will require the very thing her anguished heart is unwilling to do—be still, wait and let God fight this battle for them?
She was awake, gazing at the babe beside her, wrapped in a blanket he’d fetched from the wagon. The blanket, tiny and blue, had stirred his heart with pity. She’d prepared it for this day, planning for the child’s advent. A busted wagon, a vanished son, a brush shelter in the wilderness, a stranger to midwife—none of that would have figured into those plans.
She’d yet to learn the worst of it.
The baby’s tiny features were knotted, scrunched and red. The small head was capped in hair surprisingly dark for a fair mother and, best he could tell by what remained of the man’s scalp, an even fairer father.
Shoving those thoughts aside, he cleared his throat.
“Reckon we ought to introduce ourselves, Missus. The name’s Jeremiah Ring, lately out of Fort Pitt.”
The woman looked him over with those clear green eyes, an assessing gaze. He wondered what she made of him. He’d never gone wholly native as some men did, living long stretches among the Shawnees, but squatting there in breechclout, leggings, and quilled moccasins, he didn’t much resemble the Virginia farmer he used to be.
The woman dropped her gaze. Tired bruises ringed her eyes.
“Clare Inglesby,” she said, then frowned. “Mrs. Philip Inglesby, I mean.”
He’d noted her momentary confusion, the coloring of her cheeks. He felt it too, the disconcerting intimacy that oughtn’t to lie between two people just exchanging names. As if shy of him seeing her bare skin now, she tucked her feet beneath the dirty hem of her shift.
Again he cleared his throat. “What were you doing when I found you, Missus? You weren’t trying to follow those ones who took your boy, were you?”
“That’s precisely what I was doing.” Mrs. Inglesby pushed herself up to sitting, hair falling in golden ropes to her lap.
Now he had space to really look at her, Jeremiah noted she’d a comeliness undiminished by months of child-carrying or the ordeal just past. She’d eyes wide-spaced, a nose not small but nicely sculpted, a sharp jaw ending in a delicately pointed chin.
“What else was I to do?”
He’d no answer to that. None she’d want to hear.
~ from Chapter 6, Many Sparrows Copyright Lori Benton
rem: If you could live anywhere in any time period, where would you go?
LORI: I wouldn’t want to live anywhere or any time than where I do, but I certainly wouldn’t mind visiting a few times and places, just to see. The time period I write about of course, in the American Colonies and early United States. Also several Biblical eras and places. Iron Age Britain (Celtic Wales and/or Scotland) would be a place I’d visit, but only briefly!
rem: Ooohhh, I may need to come with you! Where did you find this story idea?
LORI: I found it researching the back story of two characters in my previous novel, The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn. I came across Dunmore’s War, which is the historical conflict the story in Many Sparrows is woven around. It’s a blip on the historical radar right before the Revolutionary War begins, but it was a significant frontier conflict for many reasons, especially for the Shawnees. It’s worth noting that readers will get to see much of that back story that is mentioned in TPoTL played out in Many Sparrows.
rem: I’m sad to say I have not read that yet… BUT that cover and title are what first brought you to my attention! Who was the easiest character to write and why? The most difficult?
LORI: Both were secondary characters. The easiest was Clare’s uncle, Alphus Litchfield. His voice was strong, his rhythm of speech so vivid, his personality so vivid to me, I could practically hear him talking to me from the very first scene of his I wrote. There aren’t many scenes from his point of view in the novel, but if there was anything like an effortless flow in the writing of Many Sparrows, it was those scenes.
The most difficult to write was Rain Crow, Jeremiah’s Shawnee sister. I had an inexplicable reluctance to delve deeply into her soul to discover why she so badly wanted to keep Clare’s son Jacob. But once I pushed past it, she quickly became so much more than the villain of the story. I ended up caring about her deeply.
rem: I’ve had bad characters turn on me like that, too, and I end up liking them! (ps, I love Rain Crow!) What do you munch on while you’re writing / researching / editing?
LORI: Most of the time nothing. That’s a habit I’ve tried to avoid. Now and then I’ll have some roasted almonds but I try hard not to snack between meals since writing is such a sedentary occupation.
rem: OH! Such—discipline… What do you do to recover once you’ve typed “THE END?”
LORI: Since it takes me pretty much every spare moment I have to write a novel (I’m very slow), there isn’t much time for recovering at the end before I have to leap into the next one. Though it’s very nice if a vacation can fall at that time for both my husband and me. That can’t always happens, so I’ve learned to pace myself and sprinkle in a lot of small recharging times through the 12-18 month process of writing a book. A day here, a long weekend there, one or two full weeks in the year. Those times include travel, hiking, photography, and getting out of my head and out of the house and into the Oregon wilds.
rem: Lori, thank you so much for visiting at my nest today! Congratulations on your newest book baby!
Lori Benton was born and raised east of the Appalachian Mountains, surrounded by early American and family history going back to the 1600s. Her novels transport readers to the 18th century, where she brings to life the Colonial and early Federal periods of American history, creating a melting pot of characters drawn from both sides of a turbulent and shifting frontier, brought together in the bonds of God’s transforming grace.
Lori’s debut novel, Burning Sky, earned the 2014 Christy Award for First Novel, Historical, and Book of the Year.
http://loribenton.blogspot.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Lori-Benton/e/B00BBP9FR2/ref=la_B00BBP9FR2_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1500857707&sr=1-1
- You opened your heart wide for life’s arrows to pierce it, and there were always arrows coming. Yet the heart, willful thing, could still long to bear itself to attack, to take that terrible risk for chance of such exquisite reward.
- Either she and her children would emerge from that wilderness together, or none of them would.
- A person could vanish on the Virginia frontier without much fuss and bother.
- “And yes. Yes, Clare. He will give us all the good things, and all that He does give is good. If it doesn’t seem so in this life, yet it will prove to be in heaven, where neither you nor I—or my sister—will turn to the Almighty in accusation and say, ‘I wish You’d given me whatever it was I begged You for, or didn’t give me that hard thing I didn’t want. I wish You’d ordered my life otherwise.’… Instead we’ll call His judgments right and true. Every single one.”
- “Don’t go judging the Almighty by (our) own understanding. We’re rarely given eyes to see the whole of what He’s doing in our lives . . . . . That’s why we are called to walk by faith, not by sight.”
A husband whose adventurous spirit cost him his life, and nearly cost hers as well. A child missing, and one birthed on the trail.
Clare Inglesby is made of stuff her husband couldn’t fathom—tenacity, courage. A mother’s heart.
But Clare is not prepared for the battle she must engage—a battle against time, and against her heart. Her mother’s instinct demands she rush in and take her son by force. But that is not the way of it, and she must bide her time, force patience she does not feel or own.
When Jeremiah Ring comes to her aid on the trail, he pledges to help her find her son. Well familiar with the anguish that ravages Clare’s heart, Jeremiah has come to a life of peace. A life with the Shawnee Indians who have Clare’s son. And the one thing Clare must do—“be still, wait and let God fight this battle”—will be the most difficult and telling mission of her life.
Ms. Benton has exceeded her already exceptional story weaving skills. A deep and poignant and tenuous situation, characters torn between sides, a mother’s heart wrenched beyond reason. The characters are alive and vibrant, their emotions real and raw. I identified with Clare as she fought for nothing but the return of her child. I felt the pull on Jeremiah’s heart between two women and two worlds. I sensed the tension of war, hovering over every scene and conversation. Ms. Benton has created a story with depth and vitality, a story of deep need and urgent hope.
I received a free copy of this book, but was under no obligation to read the book or to post a review. I offer my review of my own free will. The opinions expressed in my review are my honest thoughts and reaction to this book.
#Blogwords, Tuesday Reviews-Day, #TRD, New Release Feature, Many Sparrows, Lori Benton
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