Dawn on a Distant Shore (86 page)

While Carryck is a
fictional character, the religious and political conflicts which define his character
and his relationship to the nonfictional Campbells were all too real. Also very
real were the growing tensions between England, British Canada, and the young
United States. In 1794, the United States did try to ship grain to France in an
attempt to relieve the great hunger which resulted from the British blockade.
The ensuing naval battle in which Hawkeye and Robbie were entangled--the Glorious
First of June--was won by the British over the French. The tensions between Britain
and the U.s. continued to escalate, leading to the War of 1812, sometimes
called the Second Revolutionary War.

Medicine was advancing
at a rapid pace at the end of the eighteenth century, but physicians had not
yet put a name to the disease that ended Lady Isabel's life--the same disease
that killed Jane Austen. Its primary symptoms were debilitating fatigue, weight
loss, nausea, and discoloration of the skin. It is now known as Addison's
disease, and sometimes as tubercular kidney--a type of tuberculosis which
settles in the adrenal glands, causing them to stop producing cortisol, a
hormone necessary to sustain life. Today this is a rare, chronic but treatable
condition.

Monsieur Dupuis
suffered from end-stage melanoma of the skin, a disease that is still fatal unless
it is caught early.

SARA DONATI was born
and raised in Chicago, but she has lived for longer periods in the Austrian
Alps, on the East Coast (where she earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from Princeton),
and Michigan. After twelve years as a tenured professor--getting up early and
staying up late to write fiction--she took heart in hand and left academia. She
now writes full-time from her home in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives
with her husband, daughter, and three cats. These days she divides her time
between her family, the next novel in the wilderness series, and a large, demanding
but ever-rewarding garden.

             THE END