First Dawn
by Judith Miller
Published by Bethany House Publishers
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Reviewed by Liz Wheeler
Janette Oke was perhaps one of the first popular authors who brought the pioneers to the forefront of Christian fiction. Her characters were called to give up all security and to travel miles on uncomfortable, canvas-covered buckboard wagons with no hope of air-cushioned shocks; endure the roughest of climactic conditions with no thought of the comfort of micro-fleece; and stave off death with a fierce stubbornness.
Judith Miller follows in this tradition with First Dawn, yet with a twist. The first book in the Freedom's Path series from Bethany House Publishers contrasts the life of two families who choose to pursue land settlement in Kansas: a doctor and his family who live a life of privilege in Georgetown, Kentucky, and the Harbans, a family of former slaves who dream of farming their own land.
In the late 1800s, after the end of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, parts of the frontier states began courting former slaves to buy land and settle it for five dollars per homestead. The entrepreneurial dream of working for themselves coaxed many to travel hundreds of miles away from everything they'd ever known to help settle the west. Ezekiel Harban is such a man. Father to three daughters, he uproots the family and moves them from Kentucky to a new town being settled by Negroes: Nicodemus, Kansas, named for an African prince brought to America in chains and reportedly the first slave ever to buy his freedom.
Contrast this with Yankee doctor Samuel Boyle who married a Southern belle and moved to Kentucky. Yet with his staunch convictions about black men being treated as equals, he's never found his niche in the South and decides to start a new practice in Hill City, Kansas, the white settlement in the Solomon Valley. And so this storyteller begins to weave her storytelling magic.
Armchair Interviews says: Miller is a wonderful storyteller who unravels a fascinating part of history artfully and tastefully. The suspense is mild, but the story is a good one.