While Letitia, the freed slave is the focal point of the story, it is interlaced with the stories of two other remarkable women. One is the Kalapuya (Flathead) Indian woman, Betsy, who has lived her whole life in the valley that Letitia settles in. The other is the white woman, Nancy Hawkins, who is in the same wagon train on the way west. Her belief is that "souls are all the same color." These courageous women bind together into a sisterhood who support and encourage each other in the most terrible hardships imaginable.

Kirkpatrick writes beautiful prose with an undertone of anxiety for the characters—mostly Letitia. Letitia is worried constantly about her manumission papers which are her only proof of her freedom. If anything happens to them, she could be sold as a slave once more. Every time she would fret over or get "cowers" about her papers, I fretted right along with her. I put the book down once because the apprehension was almost too much for me. I was also angry at her husband, in name only, the Irish immigrant Davey Carson, who makes the most impulsive decisions. But of course, I picked it up again because I had to know what happened. I was glad I did.

Letitia is an incredible person. She takes the good from all she sees and embraces it. She refuses to let hateful things define her. An example of this is when all her earthly goods are being sold for auction; she imagines the blessing they will be to their new owners. In the end, when she decides that she must stand up for what is hers, she does so with a sense of justice, not revenge.

Jane Kirkpatrick is to be commended for converting A LIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS from legal documents and news articles to the living, breathing story it is now. It is historical fiction at its finest.

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