Hardbound

by Jean Morkert Tiedtke

In the poem Evangeline, the girl and her Acadian family are scattered by English soldiers to distant shores. The lovers, Gabriel and Evangeline are separated and search a lifetime for each other. In this book From Home to...Islands in the Rain, Eva and Gabriel also watch the horizons and remember the past and their longings and dreams parallel that of the poem.

There the similarities end because: what kind of fear would drive a father to visit such violence upon his daughter and demand her separation from Gabriel? What kind of understanding would permit a mother to condone that violence? and what kind of sustaining love would be summoned by the young people for the years? ...And then there's Mary, the bright-eyed dark child Eva takes as her own ...and Nathan Gray the loving missionary.