Dancing through Fire

by JoAnn Hague

A white woman, wed to a stranger and sent to work with him in the wilderness by faith.  A Native American girl forced into womanhood before she is ready.  They are oil and water.  Humility and pride.  Self-doubt and arrogance. Yet the woman Sarah Himmel and the girl Wind Maiden cajole, help, and battle their way to an unlikely friendship amid the multi-partied conflicts of the American Revolution in the Ohio wilderness.  Like those around them, the women are pawns of various parties -- English, American and tribal -- all hungering for power.  That hunger will end in a shameful and little known historical event, the calculated massacre of peaceable Christian Indians by white men. Against this backdrop, two women battle with their own demons.  Sarah, exhausted by missionary work she does from dawn to dark, fears she can never match her husband's zeal - or win his love. Wind Maiden yearns for a warrior instead of her gentle husband and is ruined by her rashness.   Through childbirth, disgrace, and unspeakable brutality, two women discover shared  Love is hard to recognize.  Faith is elusive.  True friendship survives all tests.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Historical, Native American, Fiction

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 2012

About the author

For more years than I dare mention, I have circled a single event: the massacre in 1782 of more than 90 Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten (eastern Ohio). First, I circled the massacre from the perspectives of two women, a Delaware Native American and a Moravian missionary. The product of that effort is DANCING THROUGH FIRE.

Next, I entered the world of the Fort Pitt militia that perpetrated the massacre.

I studied how they clawed through the dense forests to build fragile lives for themselves and their families. I witnessed the mounting of their fears as the Revolutionary War sucked its warriors eastward and left the settlers alone in the wilderness, easy prey for raiding Indians.

I cannot condone what the militia did, but I recognize that we might all follow the settlers' lead to unspeakable deeds unless we resolve long beforehand to follow a different path.

Reviews

[Loraine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dancing with Fire is a historically researched account of the events from 1775 to 1782 which culminated in the massacre of 90 Brethren missionaries and Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten in eastern Ohio.

I found this book very difficult to read. Following the broken language which was supposed to copy the Indians' language was very slow and tedious. The numerous Indian tribal names became very confusing. The continuous interspersing of characters speech with their thoughts was often hard to follow, and the story seemed to focus more on the characters' introspection than what was actually happening. I finally at about 2/3 the way through skipped to the last 3 chapters and even found the ending disappointing .

I would not recommend this book but would perhaps look for a nonfiction book that covered this event.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since this is the first historical fiction I've read in a while, I'm not going to say much about that. What I will say is that by about page 100 I was completely immersed in the history. The hook was definitely slow and for the first few chapters it felt more like a chore than a read for pleasure. Looking back, I could attribute that to Hague's fantastic research and detail to everyday life. She really established these characters in their time.

As a die-hard romantic, I found both Sarah and Wind Maiden incredibly frustrating. I liked it as much as it annoyed me. It just goes to show how important good communication is in a relationship. Lack of communication between characters drove me mad, in a good way.

Because I only read the first paragraph on the back cover blurb, I didn't even realize the spoiled ending (massacre) and, when I did, I found myself stuck in the rut of expecting it. It kind of dampened the shock for me. The ending was a little vague in places; I found myself getting confused over reality and imaginary. I'll probably have to go back to read it again to understand it fully.

One thing that I loved at the beginning was the two very distinct voices of Wind Maiden and Sarah. You could distinguish their patterns of thought from each other. This teetered off towards the end of the book and I found myself getting whiplash from the sudden, mid-page POV changes. I got used to it after a while (the trick is to watch for 'Salah' for Wind Maiden's POV) but it was still jarring.

Powerful, frustrating, and beautifully articulated. The story rolls like life- it has its ups and downs, its triumphs and its heavy, heavy losses. I highly recommend it- to writers for the wonderful artistry and to readers for the complete immersion that Hague offers.

[Roseanne Wilkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

JoAnn is a talented writer. A couple of my favorite examples are these: "The sun dripped its idle rays down to the forest floor." Later, referring to the sky: "Where it bent to touch the earth, it lightened with the snow's glow." Her vivid imagery pulls you right into the story. This is the first story I've read of that time period (April 24, 1775 - March 23, 1782) that wasn't directly about the Revolutionary War. It was interesting to see the war as a barely-mentioned event with the Indian story in the forefront. If you're interested in historically-accurate fiction from the female point of view, this book is a must-read. Very well written.

[Tom Pintong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a giveaway from the author through the First Reads program on Goodreads. It came autographed with a nice bookmark as well. Spoilers ahead, please don't read if you don't want to know about the plot.

It took me a little while to get into this book at first. For some reason, though I enjoy them, books with American Indians tend to take longer for me to read and get through. I think it's partly since the cultures of American Indian tribes are vastly different from what I am used to, and you really have to concentrate to figure out people's rationales for their actions and their thoughts.

Secondly, as some of the characters are Quaker missionaries, there is a lot of religion within the book. It stands to reason, with the time period of the book and the setting, but religion, regardless of the era always throws me for a loop as well.

Once I warmed to the characters though, the book really started to move, with the struggles of Sarah, a young Quaker missionary who has recently married and moved from her home in Bethlehem to try and convert members of the Lenne Lanape tribe to Christianity. The other main character is a young Lenne Lenape girl, Wind Maiden who is also recently married, but dealing with her own issues as well.

Reading of the struggles that early American settlers had to endure, it's amazing how far the nation has come in such a relatively short period of time. It's also extremely sad that entire communities of American Indians had to die to get to where we are.

I do have to say that by the end of the book, I was starting to get really angry at the foolishness of the settlers, as well as of some of the Indian people. I know the Quakers wanted to stay neutral during the American Revolution, and tried to help the Indians, not wanting them to get swept up in the war, but being so indecisive and inactive as to accept impending doom "because it's God's will" just struck me as burying their heads in the sand, and not taking charge of their own lives when they could have.

I guess if a book can evoke such strong feelings in me, the writing must be pretty good, though overall it just reinforced the concept of "Religion makes people do stupid things" to me.

I really enjoyed the insight the book gave me into how some American Indians perceive things, and some of the various cultural traits, such as not using a person's name when speaking with them, as well as some of their beliefs, like burying words which they do not want to speak, and their concept of actually becoming a brand new person when embaracing new ideas.

Overall, the book is a good read, especially if you like reading about American Indians, and the lifestyles of Revolutionary War era Quakers.

[M. Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wrenchingly beautiful story of friendship between two very different women is set against the backdrop of a little-known and shameful event in America’s history. It’s that rare treat of a book – literate and so compelling it’s hard to put aside even after it’s finished.

In 1775 Sarah, insecure and self-effacing, is chosen by her Brethren community to marry a stranger and accompany him to a missionary outpost in the Ohio wilderness. Wind Maiden, smug, self-centered young daughter of the Lenni Lenape tribe, hungers for ribbons and bells and a warrior husband, but must settle for a childhood friend with an invalid mother. Their lives twist together in a pattern neither would choose as rival tribes, English soldiers and American colonists all vie for control of the land.

The cadence and imagery of the words are spellbinding, as illustrated by the line ‘They shared a gourd of silence.’ With skill, author JoAnn Hague paints an unflinching mural of the harshness of frontier conditions. Good or bad, we feel, smell and taste the world she creates.

Though some of the novel’s principal characters are missionaries, its purpose is not to proselytize. Instead it’s a rich story with universal themes: The blindness imposed by a vision. Betrayal. Forgiveness. Self-deception and self-discovery. The nature of hope.

Ultimately, it asks readers a question whose answer depends on the individual: What’s worth believing in?

[Rhoda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, as I won this book as part of First Reads, I would like to thank the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was a very interesting story about an event in history regarding Christian Indians and missionaries, focussing on the relationship between two very different women - Sarah and Wind Maiden. The two could not be more different - different backgrounds and very different temperaments and personalities, yet mutual admiration and respect brings these two women together.

I very much enjoyed reading about this particular time in history and found the portrayals of life and the hardships of the land and living arrangements very real and I could feel their despair, coldness etc. I did struggle a bit with the names of the people, groups etc and got them a bit confused at times.

I was also a little unclear at times about what was really happening and what were fantasies/visions/hallucinations and the use of quotation marks when people were actually thinking the words and not speaking them was a bit distracting and confusing as well. Overall though, I found the book very interesting, moving and disturbing.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dancing through the Fire is a beautifully written book, Hague has a nice way of being descriptive of the surroundings as well as of the people and there beliefs. I agree with other reviewers that the book is very well researched as well. It tells a story about an aspect of history that is not well known to everyone. That is why I gave this book 3 stars.

That being said, if I hadn't recieved this book from the Goodreads giveaways I may never have finished reading it because when it came to my personal enjoyment of the book I probably would have rated it more along a 2 1/2. It is an extremely slower read. The conversations started but didn't go anywhere, everyone's thoughts seemed half formed and never fully developed. I understood them talking that way between the teachers and the indians as the translation wouldn't have worked perfectly, but there personal thoughts I would have thought would have been more fully formed.

I think that there are a lot of people who will enjoy this book and while it was full of beautifully written descriptions it just wasn't my kind of book.

[Zom Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book. It was a little difficult to get into at first as she writes from the point of view of two main characters from very different cultures. I found it easy when I was reading the white woman's version but a little more challenging when reading from the native american point of view. But this is merely a matter of which way of thinking is more familiar to the contemporary reader. Soon enough I got into the rhythm and there was no longer a difficulty.

I want to emphasise that this is not a weakness in the author's writing but a wonderful strength. With this book I felt I really inhabited both cultures without awareness of an outside narrator. This is a remarkably moving and sensitive book. It gets my highest compliment: that I feel it has changed me for the better.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I found the Native American chapters a little hard to follow with all the names but that became easier as the plot developed and the main characters began to stand out.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

JoAnn Hague is a gifted researcher. She was able to accurately portray an uncomfortable, mostly forgotten time in history.

[Kristi Kunselman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story was confusing, but something about it made me keep reading anyway.