In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss.
The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man … half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.
But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.
When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.
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If you’re a fan of historical fiction, you’ll find Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon, a wonderful read. It takes place in 1850’s America, following a wagon train carrying families west on the Oregon Trail. Along with all their worldly goods, they travel with a full contingent of challenge, triumph, and loss.
First, let me tell you about the end – actually, the afterword in which the author explains that she is descended from the pioneers on whom many of the characters are based. Her fascination with Native American culture is obvious; she presents it with detail and compassion. Likewise, the innocence and purpose of her own forebears, who ventured to make what they had known would be an arduous trek.
Cleverly, the author opens the story itself with a traumatic turn suffered by her female protagonist mid-trip. Then she returns to the beginning and works forward, from which point the story is linear. But the tension introduced – the wondering when that trauma is going to happen and how it will be resolved – stayed in the back of my mind and kept me reading.
Not that I needed much help. I have no relatives among the pioneers, but I’ve always been intrigued by their experience. This book reinforced some things I knew and introduced others. I learned a lot.
Where the Lost Wander is beautifully written. The prose is fresh, and the plot twists unexpected. The cast is diverse. While a few characters are annoying and others downright evil, the bulk are likable. This is particularly true of the two leads – Naomi May, a young widow who sets out with her family for a new life in California, and John Lowry, a half-Pawnee mule driver who accompanies the train. The attraction between these two feels real, their challenges well-measured, their stories alternately heartrending and glorious.
Though set in a very different time from our own, this story is one of courage in the face of the unknown and the importance of perseverance when all feels lost. It’s a theme that makes Where the Lost Wander relatable on a very contemporary level.
Seeking a better life, widow Naomi May joins a wagon train with her family heading across the country to California. She knows it will be a tough journey but faces it with enthusiasm and a touch of trepidation.
When John Lowry agrees to help his uncle guide a wagon train as far as a fort where he is to deliver his father’s mules, he doesn’t expect to be instantly attracted to the beautiful Naomi. But their relationship is doomed to fail. He is half Pawnee, a man straddling two worlds. She is everything he wants but cannot have.
The trail is a hard taskmaster. Soon, the wagon train is faced with challenges they could never have imagined; hostile territories, lack of drinking water, dangerous river crossings, dysentery, and racial prejudice.
It’s been a long time since I was so caught up in a story. The author does a wonderful job drawing the reader into the hearts and heads of our two protagonists, John Lowry and Naomi May. We get real insights into the pride of indigenous people, the clash of two cultures, and those caught in the middle.
FAVORITE LINES
That’s what hope feels like: the best air you’ve ever breathed after the worst fall you’ve ever taken. It hurts.
HARMON, AMY. WHERE THE LOST WANDER: A NOVEL
This kiss is slow and languid like the Platte, hardly moving, while beneath the surface the silt shifts and settles. His arms snake around me, and my palms flatten over his heart, needing and kneading, and heat grows in my belly and in my heart and where our mouths are moving together.
HARMON, AMY. WHERE THE LOST WANDER: A NOVEL
…eventually, time thinks for us. It cuts through the fog of emotion and delivers a big bowl of reality, and feelings don’t stand a chance,” John says with bleak finality.
HARMON, AMY. WHERE THE LOST WANDER: A NOVEL
Where the Lost Wander is a sweeping saga of a love that knows no bounds and defies a nation at war. It’s real. It’s brutal. It’s unforgettable.
This was such a beautifully written, heartbreaking, hopeful story of true love, strength, and the American spirit. There are lessons and truths woven throughout and heart wrenching, gut twisting realities but you have to keep reading. You have to know what happens next. This book gripped me from the very beginning. I was already getting choked up in the prologue. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an emotional response to a book so early on before.
No matter what genre you prefer to read, I would recommend picking this book up. It is incredible!
WOW! My pure heart
What an amazing, extraordinary emotional and unique love story
When it comes to historical fiction, Amy Harmon is the unrivaled queen without competition for me
Her books are very carefully researched and detailed, yet incredibly perfectly mixed with fiction, that makes you so enchanted and drawn in, that her character’s life and world becomes part of you, it’s simply incredible
My admiration and love for her books is like an addiction.
I was usually not so interested in historical fiction, but she taught me to love this genre. With books like this one and her amazing writing style, it’s really simple to fall in love with her books.
This story begins in Missouri in 1853 and describes the long and brutal journey through Americas plains with wagons that has barely enough to keep the people alive and hope that’s bigger that their skills to survive.
This is a story about people who were looking for the promised land and wanted a new, better life for their families. An incredibly heartbreaking story about broken dreams and new beginnings in a land that was all other than welcoming to the migrants.
It is a story about different nations and peoples who come together and try to understand each other, or in some cases, try to enforce their rights.
It’s America’s story.
It’s an amazing and gripping story about hope, loss, grief and finally love with new beginning in the promised land. This book is emotional rollercoaster that lets you cry big ugly tears and love the characters in the darkest time of their life and awakens the need to help them, to hug them.
Gosh, I love this book so much. I’m really happy that
despite all the horrible things and ugliness that happens in this brutal world, the main characters gets their HEA. Maybe not, as they expected. Definitely with a lot of “scars”.
But they really deserve it after this incredible story.
What makes the story even more beautiful is that a lot of the characters in this book really existed. Maybe they were not like in this book, but they were there and their descendants live in America from their dreams to this day.
Amy Harmon has yet to let me down. I had to adjust to the first person present POV, which as a reader usually trips me up, but I fell into the swing of it quickly. This story did not disappoint. I listened on audio – amazingly talented narrators. What a heartbreaking and heartwarming story of Naomi, a settler with her family, and John, a man who is half-white/half-Pawnee with two feet in the world; both are lost, but both find transcendence on this journey. I love to read the author’s notes at the end, and was not surprised she drew this story’s inspiration from real-life people in her family. I only wish she had a map somewhere to accompany this book! We were dropped right into 1853 USA, on the Oregon Trail and then plummeted into a harrowing journey. She also shared the dynamic and complicated history of tribes and Indian Nations (Sioux, Pawnee, Shoshoni, and others) with great care and authenticity (to my best knowledge). Highly recommend.
An epic journey.. OMG, I was very happy to have read this book. Amy Harmon had written a beautiful tale. A Journey to the west with the glimpse of hope. Story of Naomi Mays, the young widow really strucked so hard to me. I cant imagine the life and the hardship. Naomi was a strong, kind, a sassy woman whom I adore so much. Her love story with John Lowry were deep and love.
‘Where the Lost Wander’ was emotional gripping.. the rugged wildnerness… Family bond.. Native American culture was rich, honor and pride. I am happy to say Amy got a piece of me with this journey. Beautiful experiences to learn more about John Lowry and his family.
Vision of shared humanity despite differences
What a talented author, capable of writing so well in so many different genres! I’m hooked on her YA fantasy and am now exploring her historical fiction. I loved this one for immersing me in the life of a wagon train, with passion and love but no sentimentality. Brutality and cultural misunderstandings co-exist with beautiful moments of shared humanity.
I was worried the story would be clichéd regarding both race and romance but both are represented with subtlety, historical authenticity and believable characters. It is well worth reading the author’s note to understand some of the choices she had to make and fascinating that she used family records.
John ‘two feet’ is the pivotal character for me because his parentage gives him a foot in each camp, straddling the divide between Native Americans and white folk. The passionate love between this mule driver and Naomi, a young pioneering widow on the Oregon trail is as beset with dangers and prejudice as any adventure story and we are rooting for the two lovers.
I’m so grateful to the reader who recommended this author to me and she’s right – there are some sentences that you read twice because they’re beautiful. The imagery is never forced though and it’s only when you move on to a plodding book from a lesser author that you realise how rich and skilled Amy Harmon’s style is.
Multi-layered characters with depth in a rugged, detailed historical setting make for great reading, but throw in range and voice, and you have a spell-binding, heart-wrenching story that stays with you for a long time. A new favorite read for 2020.
Loved, loved, loved this book! Great writing, great plot, wonderful characters, and a haunting glimpse into how Native Americans were treated by the white man, how they lived, and the trials and tragedies for both in the 1800s as families traveled west on the Oregon Trail.
This book is outstanding! Amy Harmon is a masterful storyteller.
Sweeping & Majestic, It’s a breathtakingly beautiful ride to the other side of time and culture.. I’m riding high on poetic prose and in depth writing. It’s truly a blessing reading Amy’s words on paper
this story has a larger than life Vista. Spreading from horizon to horizon, it’s lit with myriad of emotions. I could visualize standing on a high mountain with the the plot spread out like a platte, and a river of sentiment bending and meandering through it. Such powerful and potent is the narrative, I could almost hear the rattle and squeak of wagons, clopping hooves of oxen and mules and gallop of horses.
Harmon spins a rich and technicolor tapestry with threads tracing to her own family tree. She goes back five generations and fills her satchel with lore of the wilder times. Amy is few sets apart from the all other authors in romance world, her prose has cadence and imagination of a historian. It tastes of Steinbeck-esque heady flavors of The Grapes. Only this has mules and wagons.
This books takes you on a journey in the yonder era when Native Americans ruled the lands, Buffalo were hunted and skins and furs were traded. Simpler times but full of hardships. Amy keeps the tone and lingo authentic which showcases her immense background research. It’s foolproof and faultless.
In the story there’s an inanimate character too- The land itself. It presents a challenge, swallowing wanderers and animals alike.
John Lowry is one such traveler. He is transporting mules with a migrant caravan of wagons. His personality an enigma of sorts, stuck between two parallel cultures, he belongs to both and none.
“My mother’s people called me Two Feet. One white foot, one Pawnee foot, but I am not split down the middle, straddling two worlds. I am simply a stranger in both.”
His restless soul is full of questions and turmoil, so he folds on himself, and fills his heart with introspective silence. He’s a lost wanderer trying to make sense of his pedigree
Also a fellow traveler is Naomi May, sole daughter of the May clan. She’s the most doggedly persistent and courageous woman John has ever encountered. Her vision clarity and lucid thoughts perplex him and strangely attract him. And her talent to draw and sketch mesmerizes everybody who sees it. She’s lost too, trying to feel the texture of love, she knows exists somewhere!!
She’s part of a tribe of The Lost Women trying to make sense of their own place in this patriarchial society.
“Naomi is a romantic. A dreamer. She sees what others don’t, but what she sees, what she draws, is not reality, and our times together have the same otherworldly cast.”
An unlikely, yet inevitable pairing, the lost souls click together. It seems all is well…till life throws them challenges, one after the other.
The sheer barbarity of certain events squeezed and wrung my heart dry. Some had me weeping, some just slipped away quietly but tore at my heartstrings just the same.
Harmon’s writing is transcendent and subsuming. When I read her books, my senses overflow with All The FEELS. I’m spellbound and heartbound, unable to look away or pause my reading. I always come out educated and enriched, so it’s an experience and not just a mere book to read. She has the knack of transporting readers in the story, making them a character that watch and learn. It’s been a historic expedition for me on the Oregon Trail.
“They call this the Continental Divide. The Sweetwater River flows east, and everything to the west flows toward the Pacific,” Abbott hollers, pulling his wagon to a halt.
“Everything thataway is the Oregon Territory.”
Her last book took me Ireland during the Uprising, then a fictional land of Saylok. I’m thankful whenever she writes and look forward to reading them everytime, I’ll follow her to all the lands our literary voyage takes us.
10 stars for Love Story of Two Feet and Many Faces
Amy, Amy, Amy . . . Where the Lost Wander confirmed the favorite-author-status you earned in my heart after I read The Bird and the Sword.
Thank you for this breathtakingly gorgeous trip down the Oregon Trail. The romance and history were decadent and lush, with descriptions that sent me hurtling right onto the perilous trail alongside John and Naomi.
LOVED.
Thank you for sending me to an early copy.
This was such a wonderful book. This author is a wonderful storyteller. I definitely recommend this book and this author.
Well written historical romance. Engaging characters, plot.
Two Feet and Naomi
Wonderful book. There are tears to be shed while reading this book but well worth the journey. The pain that John endured sadly is still being felt today by people whose lives are caught between two cultures.
4.5/5
This was my first book from this author, and I’ll definitely be checking out more of her backlist.
This is a love story and an epic adventure story focusing on two protagonists, told in alternating voices, who meet as they journey along the Oregon Trail to California…Naomi (a 20-year-old gifted artist and widow traveling with her father, mother and siblings) and John (a Pawnee/white trail guide).
There are lots of hardships to face along the way…death, illness, and violence to name a few. However the sweetness and purity of John’s and Naomi’s love story helped even out the negatives. I sympathized with John’s struggle to determine his own cultural identity as he was pulled in two different directions and felt the author handled this with nuance and sensitivity.
As a love story I loved the couple’s banter and build up to their happily ever after and found John especially compelling. As an adventure epic I found myself emotionally involved in the grueling journey, with all the characters, and with the interactions between the Native Americans and whites.
The writing was especially beautiful…the style both easy-to-read and even poetic in some instances. I found myself highlighting many hauntingly beautiful passages.
I will mention trigger warnings: death (both violent and natural); rape (not overly graphic); and some racial discrimination.
Overall this was wonderful, and I’m glad my book club chose this one to read.
The plot could seem at first a familiar trope: set in 1853, it is a romance between half-native American, half white John Lowry and Naomi May, the white daughter of pioneers emigrating to the West. He is a guide on the May wagon train. Later in the novel Naomi is captured by Indians. There are some edge-of-your-seat dramatic scenes. I won’t give away any more of the plot. But the novel, based on ancestors (both the author’s and her husband), real historical figures, and research, is so much more than than drama and plot. Harmon shows real knowledge of subjects from mule-breeding to Indian culture. As a result, this novel transcends what could be just another escape-romance about American Indians. Some readers have complained about the violence and suffering portrayed, but it is realistic, and its realism is what for me makes the novel rise to a 5-star.
An exquisitely written adventure about a group of pioneers on the Oregon trail trying to reach the west, with a touching family saga and a special love story at the heart of of the book.
There isn’t a Amy Harmon book that I haven’t liked! This is a pretty realistic portrayal of the pioneers coming across the west, with the hardships and tragedies that they all endured. The relationship building of the main characters holds you together, and this is loosely based on a distant family member of Amy’s husband. I loved it!
If there is one thing I have learned this year from life and from reading my first few historical romances is that the journey might be painful but in the end it is totally worth it. That is exactly how I felt about reading Where the Lost Wander. There were several times through this story where my heart was breaking for John, Naomi and any number of the May’s but right when I felt like giving up, the story became even more beautiful and worth it.
“The pain. It’s worth it. The more you love, the more it hurts. But it’s worth it. It’s the only thing that is.”
John Lowry a man stuck between two worlds has never had an easy life. From being raised in a family where he never felt like he belonged and being too Native for the town’s people and he never really felt at peace. Naomi May is barely an adult and already she is a widow. She is strong, brave and goes after what she wants unlike many of the women in town but once her sights are set on John Lowry, she knows that he is unlike any man she has ever met.
This was so much more than a love story; it was a story about a family on a journey to find a new home in California whilst dealing with the troubles that arise on the wagon train. Honestly, this is not a story I would usually pick for myself because it made me really think about life and the things that we go through to make a better future for ourselves and our family. This book left me with so many emotions from sadness to love, so much love. If a story of home, family and fining love is what you are looking for then Where the Lost Wander is the story for you.