Miller’s engrossing account of what happened to the European mind when, in spite of itself, it began to become something other than European. This crucial uncertainty of the age is the starting point of Mr. But the original speaker’s underlying concern was with the fateful ambiguity in the word errand. Like so many jeremiads of its time, this sermon appeared to be addressed to the sinful and unregenerate whom God was about to destroy. The title, Errand into the Wilderness, is taken from the title of a Massachusetts election sermon of 1670. Miller makes this abundantly clear and real, and in doing so allows the reader to conclude that, whatever else America might have become, it could never have developed into a society that took itself for granted.
Disguised from twentieth-century readers first by the New Testament language and thought of the Puritans and later by the complacent transcendentalist belief in the oversoul, the related problems of purpose and reason-for-being have been central to the American experience from the very beginning.
They go to the roots of seventeenth-century thought and of the ever-widening and quickening flow of events since then. These questions are by no means frivolous. Miller’s lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? In what light did they see themselves? As men and women undertaking a mission that was its own cause and justification? Or did they consider themselves errand boys for a higher power which might, as is frequently the habit of authority, change its mind about the importance of their job before they had completed it?
INTO THE WILDERNESS SERIES
Those new to Donati’s work would be better served starting at the beginning of the series with Into the Wilderness…-but any reader will be won over, sooner or later, by Donati’s affection for her tough, complex characters.The title of this book by Perry Miller, who is world-famous as an interpreter of the American past, comes close to posing the question it has been Mr. Say good-bye to Elizabeth Bonner and her brood with this graceful, sweeping conclusion to Donati’s frontier-era Wilderness series …Donati will satisfy and, in some cases, delight her longtime readers by wrapping up nearly every story line, confidently tracking a huge cast and their individual conflicts. Queen of Swords] is both a smoothly written, engrossing adventure about an early American family and a vivid depiction of the little-explored War of 1812, delves into much deeper realities, such as race and prejudice in one of America’s famously multicultural cities, the complex patterns of revenge, the price of loyalty during wartime, and the transformative power of love. a powerful adventure story, animating everyone–German villagers, slaves and Scottish trappers alike–in a gorgeous, vividly described American landscape.Įpic in scope, emotionally intense, Into the Wilderness…is an enrapturing, grand adventure.įans of earlier titles will not be disappointed, as contains the same combination of romance and adventure, not to mention the most intriguing mystery in the series yet.
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