Steve’s Book Recommendations: Gift Guide 2018 #4

by Steve, Blog-Husband

Happy Holidays, Laura’s Fan Club!  It’s that time of year again where I share with you all the great reads I’ve enjoyed over the past year.  This year I’ve gone down the rabbit-hole of the 17th Century Connecticut Valley, binding together the various branches of my Puritan forefathers.  Golly, were they a fertile bunch.  But I’ve learned a lot about early colonial New England, and I urge you to learn a lot too.  Let’s take a look at The Great Migration, shall we?

Fraser, Rebecca.  The Mayflower:  The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America.  A pretty good read, relatively light.  Fraser follows the Winslow family over the course of the mid-17th Century, with their successes and failures.

Leach, Douglas Edward.  Flintlock and Tomahawk:  New England in King Philip’s War.  A classic. Published over fifty years ago, this history is still among the standard studies of the era.

Rowlandson, Mary.  The Sovereignty and Goodness of God.  The first bestseller in American history, becoming the model of one of the most popular genres in early American letters:  the captivity narrative.  Everybody at the time wanted to read about Mary’s harrowing experience of King Philip’s War.

Williams, John.  The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion.  Another captivity narrative, this one occurring in the aftermath of the Deerfield Massacre of 1704.

Cooney, Caroline B.  The Ransom of Mercy Carter.  I haven’t read this one yet, but it’s in the queue.  The book is a little off the path for me; it’s teen girl fiction.  But it looks interesting, not only because Mercy Carter is my second cousin nine-times removed (yes, she is a real historical figure). It seems to be a well-regarded proper historical fiction.  Mercy was indeed captured at Deerfield, marched to Quebec, and voluntarily became a member of the Kahnawake community.  Tweens and teens captured by Native Americans did occasionally decide to re-identify themselves as members of a culture totally different from the one in which they grew up.