Follow the River by James Alexander Thom

Follow the River by James Alexander Thom was this month's book club read.  This is a fictional novel based on the true ordeal of Mary Draper Ingels, her capture, and her thousand mile journey home.

Summary:  Mary Ingles was twenty-three, happily married, and pregnant with her third child when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement in 1755 and kidnapped her, leaving behind a bloody massacre.  For months they held her captive.  Both nothing could imprison her spirit.

With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen.  Her story lives on - extraordinary testimony to the indomitable strength of one pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her own people.

I had read this book once before, at age twenty, and now again, thirty years later.  I have to say that the personal journey I was led while reading it the first time was far different than the one I took reading it at this particular juncture in my life.  Perhaps (I did not yet have children) I was young and it was only a pioneer story that I read and really held no tangible comparison's for me.  I'm not going to go into detail about the story as its' a personal journey for you to contend with, but for me, it was much more personal this time around. 

I will tell you that the story came alive during this read.  The character's are vivid, nearly jumping off the page.  I felt Mary's fear and her grief.  I felt her strength and her weakness.  I felt her shame and her triumph.  I felt her anger and her deep faith and thankfulness.  It was a long trek home for her, one step, one breath, one heartbeat at a time.  I can't say that I would have had her strength and fortitude.  James Alexander Thom walked the route that Mary traveled, giving us the cold, hard grit of her journey. The story is as true an accounting, I believe, as can be told nearly two-hundred-fifty (and then some) years later. Though it is a grueling read, I highly recommend it.  This is the kind of book that book club's are destined to read and discuss.