45. Dulci's Legacy by Margaret Pinard

read on my iPhone/purchased Kindle book
2014 Taste Life Twice Publishing
192 pgs.
YA Time Travel, mostly CRF, with a tiny bit of HF
Finished 3/5/2020
Goodreads rating:  3.88 - 8 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting:  Current & 1777 Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

First line/s:  "God, I hope this place is better than junior high, Dulci Oyselle thought as she passed through the tall double doors into Glace Cove High School."

My comments: This book was written and suggested to me by one of my "friends" on Litsy, which is pretty cool.  It's about time traveling, but in just short fits and spurts, and Dulci has to piece all that she's seen together with similar time traveling that her best friend's brother has had for the last four years, making him close to crazy.  I guess you might call them visions instead of time traveling, or a combination of the the two.  A bit of a different premise, though I wish the 1777 story had been a little bit more compelling.  Why would a Sottish immigrant adopt a 10-year-old Micmac girls?  How would something like that come about?  That was just a little bit fanciful for me, or at least I can't seem to understand how something like that would happen, especially so many years ago.  The contemporary part of the story was interesting ... I particularly appreciated being given information about Celtic drumming and rural Canada.  And I learned a bit about the French and Indian Wars, which I don't know a whole lot about.

Goodreads synopsis:  Dulci Oyselle is a modern 13-year-old girl in Cape Breton, who thinks high school is going to be her big new challenge, but then starts seeing visions of things happening that no one else does.
          Snowy hills appear in the music classroom. Dangerous men square off for a fight below her bedroom window. What is she seeing? And why are these visions appearing now?
          It might have to do with the new boy in town, who is really interested in her, despite her shy awkwardness. Or it could have something to do with her best friend's family; Mehron's brother is a recluse with some unexplained mental illness that has suddenly turned violent.
          Dulci will need to figure out what she's seeing, and why. To do so, she'll need to have faith in herself, a strength she's never needed before. Encouraged by her friends and inspired by one particular vision, she just might be able to pierce the mystery.

8. Crow Hollow - Michael Wallace

read on my Kindle
2015, Lake Union Publishing
335 pgs.
Adult historical fiction
Finished 2/18/17
Goodreads rating: 3.65 (7156 ratings)
My rating: 4
Setting: 1676 Massachusetts - Boston west to Springfield

First line/s: "James Bailey stared down from the main deck of the Vigilant as it eased up to the wharves, a knot of excitement forming in his belly."

My comments:  This was quite a satisfying historical fiction novel.  Puritan Boston/New England has always fascinated me ever since, years ago, I studied the history and artwork of some of the first cemeteries in eastern Massachusetts.  Most easily accessible narration about the time period, however, is based around the Salem witch trials, of which I'm quite tired.  This is the story of Englishman James Bailey who, in December 1676, is emissary for England's King Charles, who has come to Boston to find out why Benjamin Cotton, the King's man in charge of Boston, has been killed in Indian uprisings.  Here he encounters Prudence Cotton, widow of Benjamin Cotton, who has written an account of her capture and imprisonment by the Nipmuc Indian tribe and has some questions of her own.  The story kept me interested throughout, and I learned quite a bit about the time, place, and history of the time.

Goodreads synopsis:  In 1676, an unlikely pair—a young Puritan widow and an English spy—journeys across a land where greed and treachery abound.  
          Prudence Cotton has recently lost her husband and is desperate to find her daughter, captured by the Nipmuk tribe during King Philip’s war. She’s convinced her daughter is alive but cannot track her into the wilderness alone. Help arrives in the form of James Bailey, an agent of the crown sent to Boston to investigate the murder of Prudence’s husband and to covertly cause a disturbance that would give the king just cause to install royal governors. After his partner is murdered, James needs help too. He strikes a deal with Prudence, and together they traverse the forbidding New England landscape looking for clues. What they confront in the wilderness—and what they discover about each other—could forever change their allegiances and alter their destinies.