*Note: Originally reviewed shortly after 9/11. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
...You're a good woman, Amanda. A strong woman. But there's another part of you that's dangerous. In some ways you act like the windbag abolitionists - you've somehow got it in your head that you're one of those avenging goddesses of the Greeks or the Roman, I forget which... But the difference between you and one of the furies, sweet, is just this. They lived forever. You can't..."
I had put together notes for the review of this novel, and a lot of them went out the window.
The main character in this novel is Amanda Kent de la Gura. At the end of the previous novel, The Seekers, Amanda was abducted and sold off to Indians. We pick up her life about twenty years later. She believes her cousin Jared to be dead and has been living in Texas. For a time she was married to a fur trader, who was killed in the smallpox epidemic.
Our first insight is into events at the Alamo, where she has taken refuge. Her strength and her defiance almost get her killed right then and there. But she lives and eventually makes her way to San Francisco where she builds a nice life for herself and her son.
The problem is her obssessive revenge on the man she feels has wronged her family, Hamilton Stovall. She learns the truth about what happened that fateful night when she and her cousin left Boston and she is obsessed with exacting revenge on the man.
The obsession is so great that everything else falls by the wayside. Nothing else seems to matter except somehow managing to secure enough funding to buy back the family printing house. Amanda does not see the effect that her obsession has both on herself and on her son, Louis. He sees her as a woman who does what she wants and doesn't let anyone stand in her way. At one point, she even kills a man when that isn't necessary.
Nothing else matters except her revenge. When friends try to warn her about the effect it's having on Louis, she discounts their warnings, or reasons that she is simply doing "what's necessary", or puts it off like Scarlett O'Hara's famous I'll think about it tomorrow...
As California revels in the gold strike, Amada begins turning a decent profit with her tavern as well as by selling mining tools. A chance meeting reunites her briefly with Jared. He does not share Amanda's thirst for revenge and has moved on with his life. His son Jephtha Kent is a Methodist minister in Virginia dealing with his own set of problems in regards to the slavery issue.
Everything for Amanda is simply a means to an end. Her son and his well-being are pushed to the side. And in the end, the prophecy of her lover, Bart (the quote above) ring all too true. In the end, Amanda realizes her mistakes. Though she has accomplished what she set out to do, what is the cost for her? For her family? For the future?
Jakes has honed out the character of Amanda so well that if the novel were just about her, it would read just fine. In an attempt to present the slavery issue, Jakes uses the character of Jephtha. He presents his diary entries to reflect what is going on in the eastern part of the country, and it just didn't seem to read as well as the rest of the novel. It seemed to a certain extent that there was an obligation to history to present this and this was how he did it. The North and South series does a much better job presenting the slavery issue.
The novel ends in New York and introduces a pivotal character of future novels, Michael Boyle. Since Amanda is a woman without prejudice, she has no qualms about hiring the Irishman despite the prejudicial atmosphere in New York at the time. Michael grows as well during the time he is with Amanda, but even he can see what her quest is doing to her. Amanda trusts him implicitly and leaves the future of the Kent family essentially in his hands.
I enjoyed reading about Amanda Kent. I think she is one of the best characters Jakes has created in any of the novels I've read. Out of all of the books in this series, this is easily the best one.
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