Author: Geraldine Brooks
Title: Caleb’s Crossing
Publication Info: [Ashland, Or.] : Blackstone Audio, 2011.
ISBN: 9781441790200
Summary/Review:
This engaging novel set in 17th Massachusetts, primarily Martha’s Vineyard and Cambridge, is the recollections of a Puritan woman Bethia Mayfield regarding the life of a Wampanoag she befriends as a child who takes the name Caleb. The language of the narrative carries the flavor of language of a colonial American woman although at times a modern, feminist view appears in the narrative. The novel is full of heartbreak and loss, but still there’s a great amount of nobility in Caleb as he adapts to English and Christian ways. The culture and religion of the English and native are frequently compared with the later given a grudging respect. Both the woman and the Wampanoag are subservient in this society and this historical fiction is a great attempt at telling their hidden stories.
Recommended books: The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper, Black Robe by Brian Moore, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick, The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, and A Mercy by Toni Morrison.
Rating: ***
