Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

I enjoyed this book which imagines the story of the first Wampanoag graduate of Harvard (Caleb) from the perspective of a minister's daughter (Bethia) who befriends him. The figure of Caleb is historical, but Brooks admits in a note that she has imagined his character. I particularly liked the book's attention to religion and the role of religion in the early settlement of New England, and the book's interest in education: especially in who gets it and in under what conditions. Finally, the book paid a lot of fruitful attention to what a cross-cultural friendship might look like. Another satisfying read from this author.

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan

This book recounts a family's last week at the lake: Emily, the grandmother, is selling the family's cottage because her husband has died. This book covers everyone's experiences in excruciating detail. The characters mostly seem not to like each other all that much (or at least to drive each other crazy), and after spending so much time with them, I can see why. I found it hard to like any of the characters, and because the book was the type where past events unfolding substitutes for plot, there wasn't much else to like. It was well-written, but not compelling.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

This book chronicles Bryson's experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1996. In addition to his personal experiences, there's a lot of information about the history of the trail, and the nature and other things one encounters along the way. He's willing to push beyond the appearance of things (for example, what do the National Park Service and National Forest Service actual do with the land and resources they're protecting), and he serves it all up in an entertaining and humorous style. This book prompts some great reflection about our relationship to the natural world and to our own bodies and their capabilities. A great read.

Hobomok and Other Writings on Indians by Lydia Maria Child

This book collects both Child's romance, Hobomok, and a variety of short stories and other pieces on Native Americans. Hobomok is really intriguing; the plot is straight forward sentimental (the heroine's father opposes a love match with an Episcopalian. After a ship wreck, the heroine marries Hobomok [a Native American] and has a child, but when the Episcopalian comes back, Hobomok retreats into the wilderness for his wife to marry her first love). Despite the conventional plot, I was really interested in several aspects of the story: Mary Conant (the heroine) uses witchcraft to discover who her husband will be early in the story, there's doubling going on between the Episcopalian and Hobomok, and there's an intriguing and unsettled frame narrative that gives the novel an historical air. The other stories were fairly well-done; and some of them were quite moving.

The Journal of Madame Knight by Sarah Kemble Knight

This book recounts a journey undertaken by Madame Knight, a widow, in order to settle a relative's estate. She boldly travels by herself and with her cousin, bickers with various service providers, and makes notes about the places she visits (especially New York) and the people she encounters (especially Native Americans). There's not a really strong narrative thread to this work, but it tells of an interesting journey.

Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry

This young adult book also deals with Tituba's story. Certain parts are clearly repeated (again, Tituba is bought from Susanna Endicott in Barbados), but her relationships with various characters has changed and it ends almost immediately after the trials. I liked the idea of Tituba being a good weaver--the word "text" has Latin roots related to weaving fabric (so text and textile are related words)--and her weaving seems to compliment her story telling. I also liked the addition of Pim, the stowaway who is sold into indentured slavery. This book was both intriguing and entertaining.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

In this book Tituba tells her own story, which deconstructs the book's title--Salem's only a part of the tale, and not the most important part in Tituba's own mind. The story has a sly sense of humor--it introduces anachronistic concepts like feminism and racism and even brings Hester Prynne to a Salem Jail cell at the same time as Tituba. Although I found the book's tone disconcerting at first, I grew to like it more and more as I thought about it. It's definitely a book you have to accept on its own terms.

A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture by Venture Smith

In this account Venture Smith dictates his life story from his youth in Africa to his enslavement in New England to his purchase of freedom for himself and his family and his entrance into the slave-holding economy. This narrative is intriguing in part because it helps defamiliarize typical narratives (Venture remembers his past in Africa, unlike most slaves who write in the 19th century, after the legal slave trade had been abolished, he never learned to read or write, he never lived in the US South, and, after buying his freedom, engaged in the system of slave-ownership himself), and in part because it gives a fascinating account of a highly capable man's ability to market himself--an early example of extreme self-possession.

Memorable Providences by Cotton Mather

In this book, which Rev. Samuel Parris possessed during the time of the witchcraft trials in Salem, Cotton Mather gives the account of a bewitching in Boston. A woman named Glover is accused, confesses to, and hangs for being a witch and tormenting a family and its children. I'm interested in the particular interest Mather pays the particularities of the witchcraft--apparently exposing the children to any form of the Bible (whether written in English, Latin, Hebrew, or Greek) can cause the witch/devil to torment them. Also, the torments apparently stop at night. This book adds an interesting perspective to the events in Salem (which happen just three years after this book is published).

The Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather

I found this account of the Salem Witch Trials fascinating. Mather's position (as one of the religious elite at the time, and strongly in favor of the trials, but not actively involved in them himself) is quite interesting because by the time he writes this account public (and official) opinion, which initially supported the investigations has started to sour. Mather gives a very careful justification of the trials in his introduction, and then proceeds to make cases against five people accused of witchcraft. You can easily see (if you choose to read the trials in this manner) what the community and accusers stand to gain politically and socially through these accusations, and this text also does a great job of supporting the idea that the witch trials are the interior, psychological twin of the religious fight for the community's soul that manifests externally as the Maine wars with the Native Americans.

Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 by William Bradford

This book contains William Bradford's retrospective account of the Pilgrims' settlement at Plymouth Plantation. The beginning portions of the book, which give the account of how the Pilgrims came to New England via Leyden in Holland, and their struggles in the first winter, and their dealings with the Native Americans through Squanto's help were all familiar to me as they match (more or less) the story that gets told about the Pilgrims. The later parts, including all the difficulties in dealing with the investors in England, the bad behavior of some of the colonists (which ends up being presented in surprising detail), and the growth of the colony (and of people coming to other places in New England) was more of a surprise. The prose is remarkably clear to the modern ear.

Towards a Transatlantic Aesthetic: Immigration, Translation, and Mourning in the Seventeenth Century by Joanne van der Woude

This dissertation, completed in 2007, is extremely successful on many counts: the book based on it is under full review at the Harvard and Chicago University presses, Dr. Van der Woude is an an assistant professor at Harvard, and the dissertation itself identifies and then fills several gaps in the critical conversation surrounding the Puritans and early American culture and literature. This dissertation takes as its central problem what van der Woude sees as a lacuna in current scholarship: it simply doesn’t account for the immigrant experience, the multi-lingual nature of early European settlement in North America, a true Transatlantic perspective, or Native roles in shaping colonial aesthetics. The central problem was easy to find: it’s located very near the beginning of the introduction and this dissertation does a good job of keeping its central problem in mind. After the introductory chapter, which lays out the methodology and begins to work on some of the theoretical questions, the dissertation moves into six chapters that focus on a variety of different genres to explore Early American aesthetics of telling (confessional, conversion, and captivity narratives), singing (prosody and polyglot harmony), and mourning (elegies). While all the chapters work together well, this dissertation is definitely on the bulky side. It’s also uneven bulk in some ways: the mourning section feels particularly underdeveloped. I suspect I’m not the only one with that feeling, since the book prospectus which Dr. Van der Woude has posted online redistributes the chapters so that there are two on each of her sections, cutting one from the telling portion (one that was geographically isolated from the rest of the dissertation) and adding one to the mourning portion. Another deficiency presumably addressed in the book is the dissertation’s lack of a conclusion. In the book, there’s an epilogue which compares the American colonial experience to Dutch-Koisan interactions in South Africa. In addition to the book, she’s gotten two articles and eight presentations out of parts of this material. Generally speaking, though, as an Americanist, I find this to be a lucid and engaging presentation of a compelling argument. I think the close readings are done attentively, and then intelligently situated in a colonial context that gives her work relevance beyond its immediate scope.

A briefe Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England by Sir Ferdinando Gorges

In this account Sir Ferdinando Gorges offers three types of observations about the settlement of New England. He starts with a history of settlement (which actually reads a lot like the sixth part of John Smith's Generall Historie) and then gives a part on the natural resources of the land (to encourage further settlement), and unique to a lot of the early English accounts of the settlement of North America, a theoretical explanation of the government practiced in the colony.

The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles by Captain John Smith

In this document John Smith gathers and edits a collection of accounts of English experiences in North America. I'm interested in this book's generic mixture: it's part economic treatise (how expensive would it be to fit out an expedition/colony and fish in North America), part history (of Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Bermuda, no less), and part natural history/ethnography. I think this mixture is related to the fact that the colonial experience is pretty new to the British at this point, and they're still making sense of how to understand it. There's also a great vocabulary list giving an account of native words. Many are related to warfare and to the presence of the English. I'm also interested in how much of this treatise Smith hasn't authored himself (there's a lot of first-hand accounts from other people to fill out areas where Smith wasn't) and in the presence of the Pocahontas legend (notably absent from Smith's earlier work about Virginia). All in all, a fascinating read.

The Ninth Daughter by Barbara Hamilton

This book imagines Abigail Adams working to solve a brutal murder and the disappearance of one of her friends. The mystery was really well plotted, and I enjoyed the historical ambiance of the story. I thought the author did a good job representing both the realities of the time period that are easy to forget (for example, the way that most travel had to stop after darkness fell) and the complicated political situation of the time (I especially appreciated that she didn't just make all the British soldiers bad and all the Sons of Liberty noble). All in all a satisfying mystery, and I look forward to reading more from this author.

The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron

I received this book through the Barnes and Noble First Look program. As we have not yet begun our discussion online, I'm putting the rest of my review behind a cut.

A New England Nun and Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

This collection of stories offers many pleasures. Freeman writes masterful short fiction, often demonstrating the triumph of the human spirit over circumstances that threaten to cause people to choose their worst instincts. The stories value the ability to live in honesty with oneself, while trying to treat others with as much love and charity as possible, above all else. I particularly liked "Dear Annie," The Jamesons, and "The Lost Ghost." I am definitely planning on reading more of this author in the future.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

I found this novel very enjoyable. It contained an enjoyable mixture of family history, genealogical digging, and modern life. I thought Ms. Groff's use of different voices and perspectives convincing in tone, although I wonder whether she might have made more effective transitions between the historical voices and the present-day narrator. I liked the idea of something strange, benevolent, and yet dangerous lurking beneath the surface of both the town's and the narrator's personal histories. The idea that Willie's mother would not tell her the name of her father was a bit forced for me. Finally, the vintage illustrations were great and the family trees were quite helpful in keeping track of everyone.