Hold Tight the Thread » (Abridged, 8 CDs)

Jane Kirkpatrick is a best-selling author whose novels include the BookSense 76 Selection A Name of Her Own, Every Fixed Star, and the acclaimed Kinship and Courage series: All Together in One Place, No Eye Can See, and What Once We Loved. Jane is a winner of the Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage Center and National Cowboy Hall of Fame. She is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, inspirational retreat leader, and speaker.

BASED ON A TRUE STORY

In a land occupied by foreign powers and torn by confusion and conflict, a mother seeks to weave her family and her past into a fabric that will not tear.

Their Lives Were Woven by Wars and Wilderness Places, and Tied by the Peace of Family and Faith.

As the 1840s bring conflict to the Pacific Northwest’s rugged Columbia Country, new challenges face Marie Dorion Venier Toupin: the wife, mother, and Ioway Indian woman who crossed the Rocky Mountains with the Astor Expedition, the first big fur trapping expedition after Lewis and Clark’s. On French Prairie in the newly forming Oregon Territory, Marie strives to meet the needs of her conflict-ridden neighbors: British settlers and Americans, missionaries and disease-stricken natives, fur trappers and French Canadian farming families, and the surviving natives of the region.

At the same time, as a mother, Marie must weave together the threads of an unraveling family. One daughter compares and judges as she seeks to find her place; another reaches for elusive evidence of her mother’s love. Marie’s memories are threatened with the emergence of a figure from the past. In the midst of this turmoil, Marie discovers an empowering spiritual truth: Unconditional love can shed light on even the darkest places in the heart.

Publishers Weekly

The final installment in the Tender Ties Historical Series continues the true story of Marie Dorion Venier Toupin, the Ioway Indian who accompanied the Astor overland expedition in 1812. Set in the emerging Oregon territory of the 1840s, the novel weaves together the social, political, theological and personal strands of Toupin's life. Against the backdrop of a struggle among Indians and Europeans for control of the land and its resources and between Catholics and Methodists for the souls of its inhabitants, Marie Toupin spends her final decade trying to make sense of her newfound Catholic faith and her ever-growing family. Interestingly, after she had written the first two novels in this series, Kirkpatrick learned that Toupin had given up her firstborn before leaving with the Astor expedition. Kirkpatrick writes him into this novel as a forgotten son and has Toupin experience the repressed memory of him as she also struggles with a neurological disorder that culminates in full-blown dementia. Toupin is not the only character who must make amends for the seemingly unforgivable: her son Baptiste brings home a child he has had with another woman for his wife to raise, and Toupin's daughter Marianne refuses to care for her best friend as that friend dies. But when these and other characters commit such offenses, they are neither demonized nor tidily redeemed. In combining historical authenticity with an exceptional ability to render poetic the thoughts of her characters, Kirkpatrick achieves a novel that enchants as it educates. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.