McCarry

Bride of the Wilderness (original cover)

One of my favorite historical novels is Charles McCarry’s Bride of the Wilderness which has been out of print forever, it seems. A review I wrote sometime ago is below.

And then I discovered (just yesterday) that it has been re-released for Kindle and in unabridged audiobook form, which is great news for everybody who hasn’t read it yet. And for the rest of us, too.

Right now if you get the Kindle edition first you get the unabridged audio for about five bucks They are promoting this as a part of the technology push that allows you to listen to the audiobook and then pick up automatically with the print version where you left off with the audio. I haven’t tried to use that feature yet, but I’ll let you know when I do, and how it works.

The older review:

McCarry is best known for his political novels and for a series of espionage novels focusing on the Christopher family (there’s a good article about him here). One day he decided to sit down and write a historical novel about the founding of that family, set in the early eighteenth century in London, Canada, and the wilderness that would one day be Connecticut. There are an abundance of well drawn and striking personalities that move this story along, as well as great events from the Great Fire of London to the French and Indian War. The title is very romance-like, and in fact there is an incredible love story (‘incredible’ just doesn’t do it, and I would insert a lot more adjectives here but I’m holding back) at the heart of this novel, but its scope is broad.