Gritty, sweeping tale of love, resilience and tenacity in the New World wilds of Virginia.To survive on his newly cleared land outside Jamestown, Thomas Deed needs a field hand, not a wet-nurse. But instead of doing the rational thing, he fulfils a deathbed promise to protect his sister’s son, borrowing against his land to acquire a woman to care for the babe. Mary Price surprises him, adapting … Price surprises him, adapting to her harsh surroundings and quickly becoming a godsend.
Newly arrived mother, Mary Price, must stay with Deed during the term of her service or lose all hope of reunion with her sister. She vows to work so hard that he will never give her up but succeeds in ways she never expected. As they struggle against the wilderness, his spirit to protect and provide for her and the babes stirs her to unrealized desire and makes her long to stay at his side.
But when fate tests them both, will Deed give her up or find a way to keep her for a lifetime?
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This story is set in Colonial times….not my favorite era. But, one of my favorite authors wrote it so, of course, I wanted to read it . I’m so glad I did….what a great story! Not only do you get a terrific love story but also, without realizing it, a history lesson . This is a story worth reading more than once
The end ruined it for me… it was like the stupid Cupid game. Happy ever after but your car is on fire… it would have been 5 stars if the ending was differently.
LOVED THIS BOOK
I really enjoyed this book. I am not normally a fan of books that take place in the colonial period, but this book was an exception.
Thomas buys Mary for one reason, to feed his nephew whose mother died birthing him. Through a series of events, Thomas and Mary fall in love, consummate that love, and then have to fight and untimely surrender to keep that love.
This book has strong characters, an in-depth storyline, and wonderful descriptive settings. You feel their pain, their joy, and every emotion they feel. It allows us a look into the colonial period to see what life was like, not for the wealthy, but for the ones who were struggling financially or were even owned by another person. You see their struggle for survival and watch as they determine what is more important, survival or love. You then feel their fight for both.
Wonderful story that I highly recommend!
”Freedom’s Price: Colonial America Frontier Historical Romance” by Jenna Kernan is a tale of one
Thomas Deed…who after his sister’s death via childbirth needs a wet-nurse..and having been once an Indentured Servant himself….he naturally thinks of acquiring an Indentured Servant ( a common occurrence in Colonial America ) as a wet-nurse for his infant nephew…
Mary Price and her sister Jane …newly arrived in the colonies as criminals are Indentured for seven years ( to work off their debt to society) to whomever acquires their service …however Mary and her sister are separated. Thomas Deed bought Mary’s …(with her infant daughter Anne) …indenture for seven years ( after which she would be free) …and took them home to his tobacco farm. Although he threatened to sell her indenture …he did not…and Mary worked hard to make certain he never would. Toiling hard in the struggle for survival…and close proximity…caused the two to develop feelings for each other and fall in love…however evil forces threaten to drive them apart and hardships test their resolve …however the two manage to remain resolute in their new-found commitment to one another and readers will root for the couple to reach their well-deserved HEA! The year was 1666…when America was new…and the land and her people were rich with promise …and the future stretched out gloriously before them …Read and see! Much enjoyed and Highly Recommended. I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Copy of this book.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
A great story of the year April 1666 when aboard the ship Hopewell, Mary Price and her child are sold into servitude to Thomas Deed, for seven years so she can nurse his nephew, as well as her daughter. There is suspense, drama, a villain, and romance i n a time that was hard for people living in that time period. It is well written and kept me turning pages. I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
This was a wonderful novel. I loved learning about the times and this book fostered a deep appreciation for the ease of our lives today. As the characters weathered grief and loss and peril, we grew intensely close to them. All of the characters had great depth and there was a solid and moving storyline of great worth. I truly enjoyed this book and look forward to whatever Kernan comes up with next.
I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.
Indentured Servitude in Colonial America… with a Little Romance
It’s hard to imagine Virginia as the frontier, but it was in early colonial times. This book was not quite what I thought it would be. The romances that I read are typically a bit lighter, even if they have deeper themes. This is more like historical fiction with a romantic element than pure romance. I found myself wondering if all that the author stated about indentured servitude was correct. Of course, I’d heard about it and I think it’s a pretty terrible part of American history, but some details are absolutely ghastly. The book seemed almost too detailed the times, especially in the beginning, when the hero and heroine first meet when he purchases her and their trip back to his land. The book felt slow in places but then almost overly dramatic in others. I feel like the pacing was off. The hero was hard to warm up to, but he eventually thawed in his treatment of Mary and the children. There were some not-so-good characters, of course, who seemed to have it out for the couple for their own nefarious reasons. The author certainly left the possibilities open for a sequel and possibly more. Even though I finished it, I’m not quite sure what I think about this book. Something about it just didn’t ring right with me, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s that Thomas kept going on about his same objection to them (which is utterly ridiculous), how he kept mentioning wanting to sell her, and how the nefarious people kept interfering in a variety of ways. Things, in general, too, seemed to always go so bad for the couple. They should have caught a break now and then, even in a book like this!
I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.
Great read from beginning to end. Sweetly thrilling, action packed, engaging adventure filled with interesting charters, heart racing twists and exciting turns. Overall a highly entertaining journey.
If it is not one thing it is another. Sometimes the world is just to hard. This story is like I imagine it to be about 200 years ago. Indians did help the earlier settlers and the church was a bunch of hypocrites. One thing I do know they never gave up. Don’t know if it was stupid or willful. I received a complimentary review copy of the book and I am voluntarily leaving a honest review.
Oh my G..! I can’t believe I have never read anything by this author before. Something I will quickly rectify.
I haven’t read a book in a long time that had me so emotionally invested. Whenever I thought Thomas and Mary finally get a little breather and the future gets brighter, Ms. Kernan throws another obstacle in their way and makes them suffer worse than before – I really started to dislike her a little for putting her protagonists through so much heartache. But at the end of the book, that are the stories that receive 5 stars from me. (doesn’t happen very often)
I agree with the author, I would definitely want the read more books set in this setting dealing with indentured servitude and hope the story of Mary’s sister is not taking so long to come out.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Powerfully affecting American historical romance
Jenna Kernan’s fine storytelling enlivens and informs this angst-ridden story of love and hard life in the Virginia Colony. Widowed Mary, with her infant daughter Anne and Mary’s sister Jane, are transported as criminals to the Virginia colony. They are separated; Mary (with Anne) is sold into indentured servitude (a type of slavery. Her buyer, Thomas Deed, is himself a newly freed man about to begin farming tobacco. I wish I could say their HEA was granted, but this is a tale rooted in tragedy, and those roots cling tenaciously. Natural disasters abound, flinging the lovers into desperation and challenging their very survival. Much of the story involves Mary and Thomas’ inner struggles with the injustices of their lives, which have overwhelmed them emotionally and muddied the waters so they cannot tell love from obligation, duty from self-interest, or compassion for manipulation. Astoundingly, through tears, separations, pain, death, and disasters, Mary and Thomas make their way to love, and hope for a future together – HFN, not HEA. There are loose ends aplenty in the plot – enough to promise a sequel if not a series (which I would certainly like to read). Kernan excels at character depiction as well as historical detail, but it is the sheer indifference and overbearing inequities of slavery, caste, class, and privilege that gives Freedom’s Choice its punch. Kernan’s message that love can take root and triumph under such constraints is ultimately empowering. This is a voluntary ARC review. I’ve deducted one star because a few parts of the story verge on melodrama, and because the ending is not as strongly written as the rest of the book.
Freedom’s Price: Colonial America Frontier Historical Romance
Jenna Kernan
Virginia Colony, aboard the ship Hopewell, April 1666
Mary her sister Jane and her baby Anne are being sold, Mary and Anne will be going with a man named Thomas, he needs her as a wet nurse for his nephew James whom is only a day old. His mother died during child birth.
I’m not sure how things were done back in the early colonial times. But being sold into service is new to me. It seems as people were sold to work for others for years.
Mary and Thomas take the babies to his land and everything goes from wrong to worse, Marry and Anne fall sick, tobacco fields must be planted the house is in a unfit standard, Thomas believes God is against him.
Mary gets the house fixed up somewhat with the help of a native girl. Everything seems to be looking up and the house burns down, barely saving the people, Thomas suffers burns upon his back and Mary must finish planting and clearing for the tobacco. She’s successful and after the crops grow he starts harvesting and gets them in only to have a hurricane or tornado destroy everything else.
I enjoyed reading this book. I am fascinated and will be looking for more of this era.
My disclaimer…
I was given a copy of this book for my honest review.
Any book or novels I leave reviews on are not dependent on the book/novel review author’s opinion. No one influenced my voluntary review for any of the books or novels I read, they are my own opinion
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
A Fantastic Journey Through Colonial America
Freedom’s Price: Colonial America Frontier Historical Romance
By Jenna Kernan
The year was 1666 when Mary Price, her infant daughter Anne, and her sister Jane stepped foot onto the deck of the ship Hopewell, which was docked at Jamestown Colony, Virginia. A tall handsome man, Thomas Deed, had just purchased Mary’s 7-year indenture contract. Although she begged him to buy her sister as well, he indicated that he could not do so; as a consequence, Jane told Mary that she would find her on Mr. Deed’s land when her own indenture was completed.
Thomas rushed Mary from the ship to an ordinary (a drinking establishment) and pushed through to the kitchen, where a howling newborn baby was lying in a cooking pot filled with linen, and told her to feed him. Mary then understood why he was so desperate to purchase her – she was the only female on the ship that was nursing a baby and he needed her to nurse his newborn nephew, whose mother had died during childbirth. After she took care of the baby’s needs and he was baptized at her insistence, Thomas led her and the children to a dugout log that served as a boat and they commenced the three-day journey up the York River to his land.
Thomas had initially gone to Jamestown to take his sister Frances to find a midwife for the impending birth of her child and to hire a man to help him out with a tobacco crop on his land. However, before they got to Jamestown, his sister went into labor with only Thomas to help her. Amidst what seemed to Thomas to be a sea of blood, his sister died and he was left with a squalling newborn nephew. As a consequence, his plans to hire help for his land were put on the back burner as he only had money to hire one indentured servant. As he explained this to Mary that first evening, he also told her he only planned to keep her until his nephew was weaned. Inasmuch as Mary knew that Jane would be looking for her on Mr. Deed’s land, she was dismayed to hear this.
This sets the stage for one of the best historical fiction books I’ve read in a while. Will Thomas or won’t Thomas sell Mary to another party? What could Mary do to ensure he doesn’t sell her? The answer to these and other questions lie in this fascinating book. She also gives wonderful descriptions of the lands from Jamestown and beyond, the work involved in living on the frontier, planting and harvesting tobacco, and the way people did things at that time, especially when they didn’t have the funds to purchase things and must either do without or make the items themselves. The book is also a realistic romance, because who doesn’t like a little romance thrown into the story?
I highly recommend this book if you have any interest at all in early American history or how things may have been done over 300 years ago.
I received a free copy of this book via BookSprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
(I actually gave this book a 4-1/2 star rating, but Bookbub doesn’t recognize half stars.)
MsDot
Great Early American Colonial Story
by Nanc
The land was being settled by people who wanted a fresh start. The work was hard and you had to be strong to survive. This was a touching story about Thomas Deed who had fulfilled his term of being an indentured servant. Working his own land had become a reality but losing his sister in childbirth hadn’t been part of his plan. Now instead of hiring a field hand, he’s needing a wet-nurse to feed his new orphaned nephew.
Mary Price and her sister Jane have signed a contract as indentured servants. Their plans had been to stay together but when their ship arrived Mary is separated from her sister as she finds out the terms of her service have changed from 4 years to seven instead. Her new master has hired her to be a wet nurse and he lets her know right from the start that this is a temporary situation once the babe has been weaned he won’t need her anymore. Mary determines to work as hard as she can to make hi keep her for the full term so that she can be reunited with Jane after seven years.
Thomas and Mary will go through many situations and sacrifices but will tragedy cause him to have to sell his servant that he has come to depend so much.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.