Westward America Books in Order

The Westward America books, also known as the Wilderness trilogy, step earlier than most cowboy-era westerns and look at the making of the country from the ground up. These novels move through different periods and different central characters, but together they trace the push of settlement from the 1750s into later frontier life.

Into the Wilderness opens in the Allegheny Mountains during the French and Indian War, with Jessica Matthews and long hunter Noah Wilde caught in a violent, unstable world. Into the Valley shifts into the Revolutionary era and turns its attention to Annie Barnes and two brothers whose political choices threaten their lives and relationships. Into the Prairie moves forward again and looks at ambition, farming, and expansion in the Indiana country.

So this series thinks bigger than one romance.

That does not mean the love stories are secondary. They are still the main way Bittner carries the reader through the history. But the trilogy is especially strong if you like seeing private lives pressed up against formative national events. War, settlement, allegiance, and the question of what America is becoming all matter here.

If you want Rosanne Bittner at her most historically wide-ranging, Westward America is a good choice. These books keep her usual emotion and danger, but they trade some of the classic late-west setting for an earlier frontier full of raw beginnings.