147. Beheld by TaraShea Nesbit

listened on Audible, purchased with a credit
narrated by many readers
Unabridged audio (6:17)
2020
288 pgs.
Historical Fiction
Finished 12/8/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.55 - 1508 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting: 1630 Plymouth

First line/s: "We thought ourselves a murderless colony."

What I posted on Goodreads: same as comments below

My comments: Some of this story was very frustrating because of the flipping back-an-forth timewise and narrator wise.  I enjoyed being put into the middle of the history of early colonization where the author glamorizes nothing.  Who knows what really happened during that time....white male supremacy, God is mightier than anything else, saints vs. sinner (or "hypocrites" vs. indentured servants).  This was not the history I learned, but is probably closer to the truth.  Sadly, so much hate, meanness, selfishness, pettiness. The jumping around was bothersome.  I enjoyed this book in some ways, but less in others....

Goodreads synopsis:  From the bestselling author of The Wives of Los Alamos comes the riveting story of a stranger’s arrival in the fledgling colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts―and a crime that shakes the divided community to its core.
           Ten years after the Mayflower pilgrims arrived on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, in reality the town is led by fervent puritans who prohibit the residents from living, trading, and worshipping as they choose. By the time an unfamiliar ship, bearing new colonists, appears on the horizon one summer morning, Anglican outsiders have had enough.
          With gripping, immersive details and exquisite prose, TaraShea Nesbit reframes the story of the pilgrims in the previously unheard voices of two women of very different status and means. She evokes a vivid, ominous Plymouth, populated by famous and unknown characters alike, each with conflicting desires and questionable behavior.
           Suspenseful and beautifully wrought, Beheld is about a murder and a trial, and the motivations―personal and political―that cause people to act in unsavory ways. It is also an intimate portrait of love, motherhood, and friendship that asks: Whose stories get told over time, who gets believed―and subsequently, who gets punished?

31. Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding Brown

listened to audio/Audible
narrated by Heather Henderson
Unabridged audio (11:00)
2014 NAL
368 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction (based on a real person)
Finished 2/16/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.96 - 811 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting: 1676+ Massachusetts Bay Colony

First line/s:  "Later, Mary will trace the first signs of the Lord's displeasure back to a hot July morning in 1672 when she pauses on the way to the barn to watch the sun rise burnt orange over the meetinghouse."

My comments:  Historical fiction, based on a factual person, Mary Rowlandson, who was captured by Indians in the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1670s.  Though loosely based on the facts, we get a good glimpse of King Phillip's War and Puritanism in the New England in this time period.  Such harsh religious fervor!I would've never made it living in this time period without being beheaded.  I enjoyed listening to this, though I think there were many repetitious segments that could have been deleted.  I've been enjoying some well written historical fiction lately, and I hope I'll be able to continue to find more.

Goodreads synopsis:  She suspects that she has changed too much to ever fit easily into English society again. The wilderness has now become her home. She can interpret the cries of birds. She has seen vistas that have stolen away her breath. She has learned to live in a new, free way.... 
          Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1676. Even before Mary Rowlandson is captured by Indians on a winter day of violence and terror, she sometimes found herself in conflict with her rigid Puritan community. Now, her home destroyed, her children lost to her, she has been sold into the service of a powerful woman tribal leader, made a pawn in the on-going bloody struggle between English settlers and native people. Battling cold, hunger, and exhaustion, Mary witnesses harrowing brutality but also unexpected kindness. To her confused surprise, she is drawn to her captors’ open and straightforward way of life, a feeling further complicated by her attraction to a generous, protective English-speaking native known as James Printer. All her life, Mary has been taught to fear God, submit to her husband, and abhor Indians. Now, having lived on the other side of the forest, she begins to question the edicts that have guided her, torn between the life she knew and the wisdom the natives have shown her.
          Based on the compelling true narrative of Mary Rowlandson, Flight of the Sparrow is an evocative tale that transports the reader to a little-known time in early America and explores the real meaning of freedom, faith, and acceptance.

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.

47. Caleb's Crossing - Geraldine Brooks

2011, Viking
306 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction
Goodreads rating: 3.77
My Rating:  3

Setting:  1660's Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
OSS:  Bethia Mayfield tells of her life's travails from the time her twin brother was killed at age 7, through the friendship she made with Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, and following both their lives 'til the end of each.
1st sentence/s:  "He is coming on the Lord's Day.  Though my father has not seen fit to give me the news, I have the whole of it."

I stopped reading this at page 150, saying enough is enough...death, sadness, pompous Puritanism. But I picked it up the next day and then the next and finished it. The second half was much more interesting and intention-holding than the first part, though there was still plenty of death, sadness and pompous Puritanism. I'm glad I finished it, though.

This is the fictionalized story based on historical records of two native Americans who made in through Harvard College in the late 1660's.  One's American name was Caleb.  However, this is the story of Bethia Mayfield, daughter of Martha's Vineyard's Puritan preacher in the 1660's.  

Anne Hutchinson's Way - Jeannine Atkins

Illustrator: Michael Dooling
Published: 2007
Rating: 4
For: Gr. 3-6
$17.00
Endpapers: Crimson

Magnificent full page oil paintings. Text usually on the sky or the ground. Lovely to look at.

I'm so glad that this story is told, but it seems just a little bit awkward at first. The story seems to begin with Anne's point of view, but then switches to Susanna's, the youngest of her many, many children. But once the point of view becomes clear, the story flows very nicely.

Anne Hutchinson and her husband arrive with their ten or eleven or twelve children in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. Anne helps birth babies, raise her children, keep her household, and also reads scripture and "talks" with the women - and some of the men- of the community, to the disdain of Gov. Winthrop. This is not a woman's place! Within three years she is tried and told to leave. So she, with her entire family, move to an island in Narragansett Bay -- in Rhode Island.

The afterword tells of what happens to her in the years following; the story is told well and illustrated beautifully.