Freedom
to Love by Shanna Fraser
Thérèse Bondurant
trusted her parents to provide for her and her young half-sister, though they
never wed due to laws against mixed-race marriage. But when both die of a
fever, Thérèse learns her only inheritance is debt—and her father's promise
that somewhere on his plantation lies a buried treasure. To save her own
life—as well as that of her sister—she'll need to find it before her white
cousins take possession of the land.
British
officer Henry Farlow, dazed from a wound received in battle outside New
Orleans, stumbles onto Thérèse's property out of necessity. But he stays
because he's become captivated by her intelligence and beauty. It's thanks to
Thérèse's tender care that he regains his strength just in time to fend off her
cousin, inadvertently killing the would-be rapist in the process.
Though he
risks being labeled a deserter, it's much more than a sense of duty that
compels Henry to see the sisters to safety—far away from the scene of the
crime. And Thérèse realizes she has come to rely on Henry for so much more than
protection. On their journey to freedom in England, they must navigate a
territory that's just as foreign to them both—love.
Published & Release Date: Carina
Press, January 5, 2015
Time
and setting: 1815, New Orleans, England, Canada
Genre:
Historical Romance/Interracial
Heat
Level: 1
Rating: 5 Gold Crowns
Vikki’s Musings
When I stumbled across Freedom to
Love on Net-Galley, the book description drew me in. I had read A Christmas Reunion in October and
enjoyed it immensely. I immediately requested this book and to my delight, the
publisher approved my request for an honest review. Freedom to Love pulled me
in from the first page when Henry Farlow awakens in the aftermath of the Battle
of New Orleans with a hole in his side ‘cold mud beneath him and a dull gray
sky above’.
Dozens of dead soldiers lay scattered around him and panic sets in. He
must get away before the grim reaper realizes there is one still alive. He scrambles
to his feet and stumbles into a nearby swamp. In a haze of pain, he wanders until
he finds a creek to follow. He reaches what appears to be a deserted plantation.
Gathering his strength he staggers into the slave quarters where he hears young
female voices speaking a language that sounds similar to French, his mother’s
native language. He drops to his knees, his hand held out in front of him, for
the beautiful young woman has a pistol aimed at his head.
Therese, a cuarterona and her mulatto half-sister Jeanette realize the
handsome British soldier is badly wounded. After some bantering back and forth
with Jeanette wanting her to shoot him because he has seen their treasure, Therese
decides to help the injured man to the house and treat his wounds. For several
days, his body is ravaged by fever, but Jeanette is a talented healer and he
begins to slowly recover.
When Therese’s cousin shows up to claim his property, the man attacks
Jeanette. Henry defends her, but accidentally kills the man. This begins their mad
dash to freedom across the south and to the hills of Tennessee and on to
Canada, receiving help along the way from folks against slavery, then onto
England.
Can the love Therese and Henry have found on their journey withstand the
judgmental prejudice of his family if they find out that she is one-eighth
African, or will it tear them apart forever?
Freedom to Love deals with the issue of interracial
marriage and the problems that can be created when races intertwine with
delicacy and finesse. The love and acceptance that grows between Henry and
Therese had me close to tears from the sheer beauty of it. It is so refreshing
to read a story where the hero and heroine actually like each other from the
beginning and the love grows out of mutual respect.
I truly fell in love with the characters in this story. Each have their own distinct personality and are fully fleshed out, and not just the hero and the heroine. Jeanette plays an important role, and I feel that I grew to know her on a much deeper level than I normally do with a secondary character. What can I say, I loved this book and did not want it to end!
I was intrigued and amazed by the amount of research Ms. Fraser must have
done to write this compelling love story. Her historical detail brings the
period to life. This is not the typical Regency romance where lords and ladies
flirt and dance in beautiful gowns, which is the only thing historical about the
book. This is a novel I could completely enmesh myself in a time long gone.
If you enjoy historical romances with a little more depth, and one filled
with sexual tension that makes you root for the couple to come together, and when
they do, it is beautifully written with a great deal of genuine emotion, then
do not want to miss Freedom to Love.
I am sure you will enjoy this fantastic story as much as I have. Happy reading!
About the author
Susanna Fraser wrote her first
novel in fourth grade. It starred a family of talking horses who ruled a
magical land. In high school she started, but never finished, a succession of
tales of girls who were just like her, only with long, naturally curly and
often unusually colored hair, who, perhaps because of the hair, had much
greater success with boys than she ever did.
Along the way she read her
hometown library’s entire collection of Regency romance, fell in love with the
works of Jane Austen, and discovered in Patrick O’Brian’s and Bernard
Cornwell’s novels another side of the opening decades of the 19th century. When
she started to write again as an adult, she knew exactly where she wanted to
set her books. Her writing has come a long way from her youthful efforts, but
she still gives
her heroines great hair.
Susanna grew up in rural
Alabama. After high school she left home for the University of Pennsylvania and
has been a city girl ever since. She worked in England for a year after
college, using her days off to explore history from ancient stone circles to
Jane Austen’s Bath.
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