A remarkable marriage of historical scholarship and creative fiction captured in stirring prose.
A debut historical novel imagines the fate of a little-known, 17th-century English settlement in the New World.
In this tale, Chief Justice Sir John Popham, a powerful adviser to King James, organizes an expedition to the New World for the sake of establishing two settlements: one named Fort St. George, a project of the Northern Virginia Company, and the other Jamestown. He recruits Richard Seymour, a student of Francis Bacon and a Montaigne enthusiast, to accompany the Fort St. George group as chaplain. Richard takes with him Skidwarres, a Native American from the Mawooshen tribe from the same area to be colonized: a land that is now Maine. Skidwarres was kidnapped and taken back to England and spent the last two years being tutored in English by Richard; now he’ll be a valuable translator and diplomat. Popham chooses that particular place to settle because of its geographical advantages—drinkable water and a river that provides convenient access into the interior—but Skidwarres cautions him that the region is populated by multiple tribes with a history of intramural war and that the expedition members might not be received hospitably. When they finally arrive, they try to forge a peaceable relationship with Nahanada, the Mawooshen leader, but it’s always a strained détente, especially after some of his braves murder five of Popham’s sailors and then a band of English soldiers rapes and murders a native girl. Richard does his best to advocate for diplomatic solutions, but Adm. Raleigh Gilbert prefers shows of force to achieve his ends. Author Seymour—a distant relation to Richard Seymour—does a masterful job of filling in the historical blanks with dramatic invention. Almost nothing is known about the disappearance of Fort St. George—records only exist for the first two months of its 14-month existence—an opportunity for blending fact and fiction the author artfully takes advantage of in his rousing narrative. He details the building of the fort, which many of the men, settling this “raw land,” see “as a sign of long overdue prosperity, or at least potentially so.” Seymour supplies plenty of intriguing personal drama as well: Richard is engaged to Margaret Throckmorton back home, but he begins a torrid sexual relationship abroad with young Lilly, who made the trip disguised as a boy.
A remarkable marriage of historical scholarship and creative fiction captured in stirring prose.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-938883-51-4
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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