Review: Many Sparrows

Many Sparrows by Lori Benton

Waterbrook Press, 2017.  Trade paperback, 400 pages.

Clare Inglesby and her family have left Virginia to travel to Kentucky in the year before the American Revolution begins.  En route, the wagon breaks down and her husband, Phillip, leaves his family to seek help and never returns.  Things go from bad to worse when Clare goes into labor, then her son also goes missing. Luckily, frontiersman and adopted Shawnee Jeremiah Rings comes along and helps Clare.  Together, they embark on a journey to try to find young Jacob, who they determined was captured by native warriors.

This journey will take months and force Clare to live within a Shawnee village.  While there, she must be patient to see if her son will be returned to her.  She also learns to love her new daughter, Pippa, and the native ways, the latte with the help of her new friend Crosses-the-Path.  Meanwhile, Jeremiah struggles with a predicament he finds himself in that places him at a crossroads where he feels he will betray either a promise to Clare to help her locate her son or breaking his adoptive sister, Rain Crow’s, heart as she was gifted Jacob to replace her own late son.

As usual, readers will appreciate Benton’s attention to historical detail.  Not only does she provide an accurate representation of the era and peoples, she also ties in the events further afield since mentions of the brewing revolution were briefly mentioned in the western area in which the novel was set.  As usual, the characters draw the reader’s into their plight and this makes the readers connect with the characters more.  With the many heart-wrenching aspects of this novel, this was often felt.  And the ending contained one last unexpected twist in this story about patience and forgiveness.

Do you think you will read this novel?  Have you read any of Benton’s other works?  For either question, what did you think?

I received this book for review from Blogging For Books.  It was released last week.

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