Wilderness #59

ONLY THE STRONG
as by David Thompson
Leisure, March 2009

Nate and Winona King know the frontier is a dangerous place. Even more so for a family of runaway slaves. The Kings thought they had saved their new friends from the worst of their troubles, a gang of vicious slave hunters. But two of the hunters survived – and have hired a seasoned frontiersman and four killers to track the Kings and the runaways down. Nate and Winona continue to lead their party across the vast prairie to the far distant Rockies. Little do they realize that a pack of two-legged wolves are nipping at their heels…and that eventually the prairie will run red with blood.

This book continues a storyline begun in the previous entry in the Wilderness series, Cry Freedom.

David Thompson (David Robbins) hooks the reader from the word go, his superb use of cliff-hanger chapter and scene endings making it very difficult to put the book down. Not only do the King’s, and the family of slaves they are guiding to a new life, have to contend with a vicious pack of slave-hunters, they also have to deal with the added danger of the landscape and wildlife.

It’s the creatures that inhabit the wilderness that provided some of the most exciting moments in this story, both of Randa’s encounters with buffalo making for gripping reading.

David Thompson also reaches the reader’s emotions really well, as through all the family bickering and battles of wills, and the never-ending struggle for man and woman to understand each others way of thinking, comes a powerful sense of love, none stronger than that that sees Nate King become consumed by rage that leads to a savage and brutal killing spree.

Does the book have a happy ending for the King’s and the runaway slaves? I guess you’ll just have to read it and find that out for yourselves.