Meh. I was excited about this because of the cover (shallow, I know) and the premise sounded fascinating.

I was initially turned off by the protagonist. To me, she came off as anachronistically modern. She questions her Christian indoctrination, she's a nature lover, she's sensitive to animals and is open--minded and curious about the Native Americans, and she seems to have pretty much endless free time to roam around the island unchaperoned and unquestioned. She struck me as kind of a Mary Sue. But no one else here seems to have this problem with her, so maybe I'm just being really cynical and critical.

After I got over that, and my fears that this was going to be a pretty cookie-cutter book, I did enjoy the story. It was interesting, though, actually I'd have a hard time telling you exactly what the story was about. The narrator isn't really close enough to Caleb to talk about his internal struggles and decisions to go to Harvard. That, in a way, would have been a much more interesting book. As it was, the story is mainly Bethia's, and the ending is jumpy and disjointed. I either wanted more of Bethia or far less of her.