Thorns in Eden
Written by Rita Gerlach
328 pages
Published by PublishAmerica
Review by Bonnie Toews
Receives: 
If it were not for a heroine who does not fit into her
time, Thorns in Eden could not be written. Rebecah Brent embodies the heart of the American Revolution, while her author, Rita Gerlach, embraces the life of a historical period that she is making
her own with a voice America hungers to hear. She writes historical romance, but she achieves literary significance with lyrical imagery and an eclectic blend of language from yesteryear in a modern
free flowing style that absolutely suits the period she writes about. Any page reflects it: On this first of May, 1773, the twilight air fell deep and cool, scented of budding leaves...The
sky deepened and stars brightened...He was a gentleman of the old school, dressed in modest precision, in a buff blue coat and cream breeches, his shoes buckled, his linen shirt stark white
and smelling of milled soap.
Every chapter rises and falls with dreams realized and love denied, with life and death dangling over every decision, brash courage racing headlong into jealousy, and steadfast faith pitted against vengeance. The pages fly by. It’s impossible to put the book down, as the author catapults the reader into the colonial world of 1773, particularly the Maryland frontier of Fredericktowne and puritan England, where you are either loyal to the crown or you are a traitor. Yet, in the fervor of patriotism and a longing for liberty grows a love that deeply binds Rebecah Brent to her hero, John Nash, a young American who has come back to England to visit his parents on the eve of the Amercian Revolution. Everything conspires to keep them apart. First, Rebecah learns that it was Nash's sword that sliced her father's arm when Nash escaped from the Redcoats her father commanded in the colonies. A gangrenous infection sets in, and when her father returns to England to arrange Rebecah's marriage to a rich nobleman, he dies. Rebecah's mother has already died during a terrible sickness. Now orphaned, her uncle and his family take her in, and she feels obligated to carry out her father's wishes, to marry a man she despises. Nash begs her forgiveness, but in her grief, she stubbornly rejects him. And so he leaves Rebecah behind to a loveless marriage and returns brokenhearted to his farm in Maryland. Rebecah struggles to do what she believes is right, but the young man from America clouds her every thought. Just as Rebecah must decide whether she will secretly carry the gold Nash’s dying father is sending to him to help finance the patriots' rebellion, the author splits the full story into two parts—Thorns in Eden and The Everlasting Mountains—but the reader doesn’t want to wait for the “rest of the story.” This is a novel that begs to be told in one volume. J.K. Rowlings has proven readers will stick to a long book when they become enraptured with favorite characters and what happens to them. Rita Gerlach has written an equally gripping work, and I believe in time we will see these two sequels reprinted as one great epic.
In legendary literature, I find Thorns in Eden as definitive a saga as Gone with the Wind or North and South. What the name of Margaret Mitchell or John Jakes has come to mean about the Civil War, so also will Rita Gerlach's name become synonymous with the American Revolution to the patriot in every living soul, child or adult. Gerlach’s historical fiction belongs in our schools, in our libraries and in our homes—it is a spiritual revelation as much as it is American history in living color—and has great potential for a television series based on the founding of the United States, at a time when Americans need to be reminded of the valor and moral fortitude their forefathers shared in bringing their dream of freedom to this land.
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Bonnie Toews is the author of Treason & Triumph, a novel of historical intrigue set in World War II. A national award-winning business journalist whose articles and editorials appear in Canadian magazines and newspapers, she is currently writing her next novel, The Sun’s Tears. Her website can be found at http://www.bonnietoews.com.