historical fiction
Where the Lost Wander is one family’s story of western migration in the
1850s. The May family is part of a large
wagon train traveling the Oregon Trail.
John Lowry is half-white half-Pawnee and has never felt comfortable in
his own skin. In helping the train
leader on the journey, he becomes close with the May family.
Right up front, I’ll say this is my least favorite Amy Harmon novel of the eleven I’ve read.
The main problem with it is that much of it is just boring details about
the actual travel and surroundings. Sure, it’s important for the author to
paint a picture of the setting and she did that very well. The problem is that, as a proportion, there
was way too much scene/journey description and not enough about the
characters and their challenges. Truly,
I struggled to get through the first half of the novel and I’ve never had any
problems getting into any of her other novels.
The other big problem is that she starts the novel with the terrible
attack that takes place about ¾ of the way through the novel’s story. So, you already know that many of the
characters die and this is how the author expects to hold the reader’s
interest--to keep reading and find out
where things went wrong and what happened to Naomi May. But the story was so slow paced that even
that question wasn’t motivational enough for me. Mostly, I only kept reading because of my
respect for the author.
As with her other novels, the characters are wonderful and
she is good at allowing the reader to get inside her characters psyche/motivations. But, the storytelling itself was too slow-paced for the small reward at the end. I understand this was a
personal story for her as it is mostly about her husband’s ancestors and I appreciate
that. But it doesn’t hold a candle to any of the other novels of hers that I’ve
read.
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