"Epic story of journey through the west."
Reviewed by Sandra Wurman
Posted January 26, 2023
Romance Historical | Romance Western
For Katherine Fairfield, her journey started as an adventure of sorts but ends up being a test of survival. Quite innocently, Katherine is accompanying her new husband across the western territories to serve as missionaries. Their mission is to assist in the "civilizing" of the Native Americans they would encounter on their trip. Katherine routinely describes most of the natives as savages. Having no personal knowledge or association with any of the tribes or their community, she is basing her description on what the council of missionaries does. Preaching to savages so that they leave their reliance, traditions, and birthright and become "good Christians." A blatantly insulting and elitist viewpoint, but that was a common belief. In actuality, it was all a huge ruse to acquire the tribal land, and use the natives as instructors in the trades that the settlers were planning on assimilating as their own. Tell me again who the savages are.
Kathleen Eagle brings these stories to light and to life in every book she writes. There is always an incredible element of facts and truth. Her characters come to life through their spoken dialog and their quiet thoughts. Many characters are based on real people, often hidden in the annals of history.
HEAVEN AND EARTH includes discussion about the treatment of the indigenous people of America before it evolved into the United States of America, a country created with the joining of many undeveloped territories. I love books about Native Americans and appreciate a chance to continue to learn about yet another challenge they faced when their land was confiscated.
HEAVEN AND EARTH also touches on a few sometimes-distressing stories about folks traveling west. Arduous travel through vast undeveloped land. Most were truly unprepared for what challenges lay before them. And Katherine and her husband were a perfect example. Kind of starry-eyed and in love, Katherine was willing to follow Thomas wherever he envisioned helping people through his missionary work. But neither could have foreseen the peril in their path. They were left behind by their wagon train. Thomas died of the fever. Katherine now drove her wagon with a very ill child whose parents had succumbed to the very sickness that now plagued her.
Katherine would have been still another victim if not saved by Jed West. And this is their story told with an amazing backdrop of history.
Those of us who find conflict in rationalizing how the original inhabitants of this land were treated will find HEAVEN AND EARTH a moving, informative look into their conditions and treatment. The utter disrespect for the traditions and language is palatable. The movement to change them was quick and decisive. The misuse of the land and its herds of animals still resonates. All due to authors like Kathleen Eagle. HEAVEN AND EARTH is gritty and real and wondrously penned by a talented author.
SUMMARY
It's September, 1846. Newlyweds Thomas and Katherine Fairfield were headed to the Whitman mission in Oregon Country—commissioned by a New England mission board to help spread God's word to the Natives—when typhoid fever overtook the wagon train. After caring for fellow travelers, Thomas died, and his sick wife was soon abandoned. Barely able to stand, Katherine is determined to fulfill her promise to carry on with her husband's work. She might not be as strong as her mules, but she's just as stubborn.
Warned by Natives of settlers spreading deadly contagion and a sick woman left behind, Metis (mixed-blood) trapper Jed West finds Katherine and takes her to his cabin, hoping to save her life. He doesn't see himself as a man who might need some saving himself until he begins to doubt he'll be able to let her go.
ExcerptExcerpt from Heaven and Earth by Kathleen Eagle
Bell Bridge Books, available in e-book and trade paperback formats
Chapter 1 pp. 11-12
Newlyweds Katherine Fairfield and her husband--a novice but zealous young minister--were on their way to the Whitman Mission in Oregon Country when their wagon train was beset by Typhoid fever. The pair helped care for fellow sick travelers until Thomas died and Kathrine was abandoned by the train, left with a dying orphaned child.
Friendly Shoshone hunters have just warned Jed West of a sick white woman left with a dead child and abandoned by a group of wagons leaving a death trail along the white man’s road.
She’s probably dead already. If he’s smart, he’ll stay away, lest she take him with her. But she might be alive. And if she is, he might be able to help her. And the if she lives, and if she’s smart, she’ll go back where she came from.
Ah, but Reader, what kind of a story would that be? Here’s a snippet of an early scene from Heaven and Earth. I’m betting on two stubborn, strongminded, deeply caring people to draw you into their story.
**********
“No!”
West spun on his heel, the shrill protest catching him off guard. She repeated the word more than once as she stumbled toward him, waving her bony hand like a wild-eyed apparition clamoring on behalf of a fellow corpse. Her hair could have been a nest stuck high on some gray-faced crag, and her half-buttoned clothes were as dark and dusty as any shroud. She fell to her knees beside the little hole, her hands snatching like ravens’ beaks at the blue-and-yellow blocks of fabric that shrouded the dead child.
West leaned down and took a firm grip on the woman’s shoulders. He hoped she hadn’t gone mad on him. He thought he could treat her illness, but he knew of no herbal remedy for madness.
“Don’t trouble yourself, ma’am. I’ll take care of this, and then I’ll get you to a place—”
“Deeper,” she wailed. “This must be deeper.”
“I don’t know how you made it this far,” he muttered as he tried to pull her away. “Give it over, now. You’re using up what strength you’ve got left.”
But she held her ground, digging at the dirt with one claw while she clutched the quilt with the other. “The wolves,” she gasped. “They rip, and they tear, and they—”
“The child is dead, ma’am.” And you’re not far from it. “Nothing can cause her any more pain.”
With an impossible burst of strength she wrenched herself from his grip and turned on hands and knees, suddenly kin to the very animal she feared. An unholy fire brightened her eyes as she poised herself to defend her charge. “She will be buried decently,” the woman snarled. West watched in amazement as she reached with trembling hand for the shovel he’d dropped beside the hole. “I shall . . . do this job properly myself.”
West grabbed the shovel, and for a moment there was a contest of her will against his physical strength. A man’s power drained in the face of a woman’s instinctive defense of a child.
“I’ll do it,” he said, and she searched his face for some assurance. She must have found it, for she yielded the shovel. He offered a supporting arm, and she gave way to it and let him carry her back into the shade of the wagon.
He moved the corpse aside, removed his shirt and dug. He cursed the sun and the stench of the heat-ripening corpse and the eyes of the crone who struggled to remain conscious only to supervise him. But he dug. Dirt and sweat lay thick on his bare back without a breeze to cool it. It was a relief to deposit the body and drop the first shovelfuls of dirt onto the quilt.
He heard a breathless grunt as he shoveled the last of the dirt atop the mound he’d built, and he turned to find the woman pulling herself up, hands climbing the wheel’s spokes like the rungs of a ladder.
West tossed the shovel aside. “What in hell are you trying to do now?”
He reached to steady her, and she grabbed for his arm and swayed against him. “We must pray for her now.”
“If you keep this up, I’ll be digging another damn hole.” Again he swept her into his arms. “And then it’ll just be me, and I’m not much for praying.”
She rested her cheek against his grime-streaked shoulder. “Please. ‘The Lord . . . is my shepherd.’ You know the words.”
Her voice was thready, and her breath felt like a dandelion puffball tickling his chest. Something inside him rose to the occasion of her determination and would not let her go it alone. He jogged his memory and recited most of the words, lending his voice simply in support of hers. The psalm came to him most naturally in French, but he followed her lead in English. By the time he spoke of dwelling in the house of the Lord, she had given out. He loaded her into the wagon and headed south for his mountain.
Heaven and Earth ASIN: B0BCFCH2HW Available now from your favorite bookseller
COPYRIGHT 1990 by Kathleen Eagle, mass market edition published by Harlequin Books 1990; REVISED by the author for Belle Bridge Books 2022. No part of this material may be used without permission.
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