65. The Planters by Victor Zugg

#2 A Ripple in Time

read on Kindle

2020
371 pgs.
Adult Time Travel
Finished 6/21/21
Goodreads rating: 4.30 - 624 ratings
My rating: 3.5
Setting: 1720 South Carolina coastline

First line/s: "Nathan Sims eyed the sword's sharp point, hovering inches from his throat."

My comments: Most of this episode taes place on the open sea as Mason, Charlie, Jeremy, and Nathan travel back-and-forth between the plantation and the Spanish fort in Saint Augustine where they sell the rice so that they can pay the first installment that they owe Mrs. Stevens in New York for the purchase of the plantation.  At the end, the rotten Nthan has died and Karen is nearing the end of her pregnancy.  

Goodreads synopsis:  A continuing struggle for survival in a time long past.

        Former Federal Air Marshall Stephen Mason has again done the impossible. He has passed back through an unexplainable time portal and reunited with the three people he cares about most.
        It’s 1720, Charles Town, Carolina Colony, a time and place fraught with hardships and hazards. Carving out a life here will be challenging, especially for these modern-day transplants. There are few people they can trust, none in whom they can confide. But they have each other. And they have a rice plantation.
        With no apparent way home, the plan is simple: grow, harvest, sell, and make life as comfortable as possible, without getting too far ahead of history. But with a million ways things can go wrong, the execution may prove considerably more complicated.
        New to a new world, can Mason, Karen, Jeremy, and Lisa navigate the hard realities they are only beginning to understand?

PICTURE BOOK - Christopher Newport, Jamestown Explorer - Sharon K. Solomon

Illustrated by Dan Bridy

2013, Pelican Publishing

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.0

My rating: 3.5

Endpapers: rust

Illustrations nicely compliment the story, leaving less white on many pages than some smaller publishers might have (yay!)

My comments:  I've always had a fascination with the mysterious histories of Roanoke and Jamestown, even visiting each several times.  This picture book tells the story of Christopher Newport - who after years of being a privateer (PIRATE!), was hired by the Virginia Company to be the commander of the three ships - the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery - which were to be the founders of the first permanent settlement in America: Jamestown.  According to this, Captain John Smith was a passenger and somewhat of a troublemaker, not particularly the captain/leader that my memory of history seems to make him out to be.  But, alas, since I now have more questions about these two men and their parts in this history,I now have the desire to look into things a bit more and read anew.....

Goodreads:  Christopher Newport made history when he founded the first British colony in America. Discover how the young lad from Harwich, England, came to command three ships destined to reach the New World. This biography takes readers on Newport's adventures of the high seas, full of sword fights, exotic foods, and shipwrecks. Join him on the journey to America, the quest for the elusive Northwest Passage to China, and beyond.
          In 1857, Sir Francis Drake hired Newport to capture Spanish ships and bring treasures back to England. After ten years as a privateer, Newport was chosen by King James to command three ships owned by the Virginia Company. On this voyage, Newport and his crew changed the world by founding Jamestown, the first successful English-speaking colony in America.

When I Wore My Sailor Suit - Uri Shulevitz

Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009
$16.95
32 pgs.
Rating: 4
Luscious vocabulary: provisions, destination, arduous, departure, valiantly, luxurious, disrupted, pelting, barrage, resume, sternly
Illustrations: 7/8 of page, boxed by white
Endpapers: Azure

A young boy dresses as a sailor and goes to visit his upstairs neighbor. They have a model ship - and his imaginative journey begins. He makes it through a storm and arrives on a jungle island. He escapes pirates and finds a treasure map. but when he feels like someone is watching him he "returns" to the room and sees a painting of an ominous-looking man, whose eyes seem to follow him wherever he goes. It unsettles him. After fleeing for home, the boy realizes something. Returning to the painting he says, "you can't leave this wall, you can't leave this room, but I can go far away on an exciting journey."

Bravo for great fanciful works, a great message, and lovely illustrations.