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THE WICKEDEST PILGRIM by Donald Barr Chidsey

THE WICKEDEST PILGRIM

By

Pub Date: Feb. 28th, 1961
Publisher: Crown

An original approach to the Plymouth colony story begins with the boarding at night of a very drunken privateer in the harbor at Plymouth, England, and his belated discovery next day that the ship was at sea- and that it was the Mayflower, not his own vessel. But that was not the only shock he faced. He had never encountered people such as the passengers on board -- nor had he ever dreamed of going to the New World. The story of the voyage- of Sal's gradual change from a hard-bitten pirate to an acquiescent member of the colony -- of the initial and abortive landing on the Cape and the subsequent settling in at Plymouth -- and of how Sal almost became a permanent and respectable settler and married man adds up to an ingenious way of telling the grim tale of the earliest colony in New England. That Sal was ordered back to England makes a convenient way out of the historical facts and records. Not great historical literature but good entertainment.