Review of Trail of Crosses by Jo Grafford

Trail of Crosses by Jo Grafford
on September 9 2014
Genres: Historical
Pages: 378
ASIN: B00NF6AE1Q
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Jane Mannering can shoot a rifle and handle a knife as well as any Englishman. However, she is no match for the red-painted warriors who ambush her section of a Colonial caravan the moment she and her comrades reach the shores of Virginia.

Jane plots their escape during a forced march inland, leaving a trail of maltese crosses carved on the trees – their pre-agreed upon signal of distress. All the while, she fumes over what interest their captors could possibly have in a twenty-three-year-old spinster and a rugged band of brick masons, sawyers, and farmers.

When the ruthless Chief Wanchese intercepts them at the crossroads of the Great Trading Path, Jane is shaken to discover their greatest enemy plans to keep her for himself. It’s a pity he’s the only man on two continents who’s ever stirred her heart. Alas, she has an entire colony to save, and capturing his attentions is not part of their escape plan.

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I was really excited to start Jane’s story in Trail of Crosses, Book Two of Jo Grafford’s Lost Colonies series.  Jane’s character really interested me in the first book and I was really invested in her fate and the adventure that awaited her in the next series.

When we first encounter Jane, she and a few of the original colonists have been captured and are being dragged off to be sold as slaves by not so very friendly Indians. Fortunately for them, Wanchese, cousin to Manteo, frees them from a life of slavery and adopts them into his tribe.  The unusual ceremony of adoption was an introduction to a completely different way of life and what would ultimately be their future.  The stiff and indolent society of London was now part of Jane’s past.  It was a transition that she easily slips into, having never felt comfortable in polite society with the lords and ladies and what she believes to be their false sense of entitlement.

Her new home offered family, an adoptive mother to replace the mother she had once lost, and hopefully a man to share her life with in Wanchese.  But many obstacles face the two,  one of which is the fact that he is chief and she is only an adopted person into their tribe, a rank that is deemed quite low. But Jane is unlike any foreign woman Wanchese has ever encountered.  Brought up in her youth by her father, Jane was treated more like a son than a daughter and her upbringing has helped her bond with her new family as she endures the hardships of her new home.  A huntress and a trapper, Jane is efficient with weaponry and survival skills, an admirable trait as she  forms a bond with her new family.

The author does a brilliant job in introducing you into Wanchese’s life, to his people and their ways. For any other European woman this life would have been too harsh.  The protagonist needed to be strong willed, stubborn, headstrong and smart.  A woman with fragile sensibilities would have surely gone mad in such a unique and at times callous environment. But Jane persevered, and I loved her character all that much for it.

I loved this book and was a bit disappointed at the abrupt ending.  I hope that the series continues and the that the journey does not end here. For readers that love historical fiction, this series is one I would continue to recommend.