From bestselling author Emerson Ford comes an unforgettable true story of a woman who refuses to be tamed, set against the sweeping backdrop of the American Revolution. Perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing, The Four Winds, and A Girl Called Samson.
Virginia, 1749. In the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Rosanna Waters is everything a proper lady shouldn’t be—barefoot in the forest, gripping tree roots on the muddy riverbank. She should be home helping with the wash. Instead, she’s defying her mother one time too many. The day Mama rides out to fetch her wayward daughter, her horse slips on a cliff edge and Rosanna learns that some wildness comes with a price too terrible to pay.
Now with her mother crippled and her family depending on her, Rosanna must abandon her wayward spirit. Then Callum Stewart arrives, a Scottish boy with hair like autumn fire. In him, Rosanna recognizes something that calls to the part of herself she’s trying so hard to bury, until war tears them apart.
As revolution engulfs the colonies, Rosanna has carved out a life in the unforgiving backcountry—eight children, a working farm, and a hard-won independence. But when the war arrives at her doorstep, threatening everything she’s built and everyone she loves, Rosanna must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect her family and—come face to face with the boy who stole her heart years ago.
From Emerson Ford comes an epic tale of a woman who refused to surrender—not to grief, not to the wilderness, and never to anyone who tried to break her spirit.
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Summary
Reviewed by Rebecca
"Dear Mama, You always said I'd be the death of you. How did you know?"
Wild, reckless, and free-spirited, Rosanna Waters bucks her genteel mother's every attempt to transform her into a mannered young woman, until one tragic afternoon changes the trajectory of her entire family. Assuming many of the responsibilities for her large family, Rosanna still has time to catch the attention of a young Scottish indenture after boldly defending Callum Stewart in the face of a notorious bully. But as time and circumstances often do, growing up does not change the fact that life is not always fair.
Two wars punctuate this story. Rosanna marries, bears eight living children and moves from Virginia to South Carolina, her three oldest sons join the militia while the one who put his signature upon her young heart only appears in an occasional accidental memory. As you might suspect, this is not the end of the story.
There are so few authors who can write a story spanning decades of early American history and manage to seam together the most important details without overloading the reader with extraneous material. Like the flow of a river, Rosanna's story (inspired by the courageous life of the author's sixth great-grandmother) moves at a constant pace with natural bends, curves, and overflows that every great river carves along its landscape. With characters who spring to life on the page, and plot twists that are both heartwarming and heartbreaking, readers will be mesmerized from beginning to end with the constancy of love and loss, tragedy and triumph, and endless reasons to hope.
"Come live with me and be my love . . . . "