Wilderness Run

"While exploring the frozen expanse of Lake Champlain, Isabel "Bel" Lindsey and her cousin Laurence hear a hoarse voice call out to them, the voice of a runaway slave.". "The teenage children of wealthy Vermont lumber barons, Bel and Laurence decide to hide and aid the runaway. The choice catapults them from their sheltered upbringing into the central issue of their time: slavery and the future of the Union. Wilderness Run recounts their coming of age as it follows America's own loss of innocence after entering the Civil War.". "Two years pass, and Laurence is a soldier fighting in some of the war's bloodiest battles, while Bel, in the confines of her father's mansion, begins a tentative flirtation with her French-Canadian tutor, Louis Pacquette, only to see him enlist for the Union. As Laurence and Louis become friends and serve in the same brigade, Bel starts to unravel a painful family secret. The histories of family and nation merge when Bel goes to serve as a nurse in Washington D.C., and, after the terrible fires of the Battle of the Wilderness, reunites with the two men who love her."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Romance, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.