Mayflower Lives

May 13, 2019
Historian and BBC consultant Whittock (When God Was King) pays homage to the upcoming 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s 1620 voyage with this slightly unfocused group biography. Using as a lens the lives of more than a dozen people associated with the ship, he explores religion, politics, economics, romance and family life, crime, and relations with Native Americans in the Plymouth settlement. Whittock looks at the Pilgrims’ religious faith in chapters on William Bradford and William Brewster. Four-year-old Mary More’s brief existence occasions a discussion of patriarchal norms: convinced that Mary and her three siblings, all under the age of eight, weren’t his biological children, Samuel More sent them off to America as indentured servants—and only one survived. Chapters on Squanto—an Algonquian who was kidnapped, taken to England, and returned before the Pilgrims arrived—and militia commander Myles Standish take up the often contentious relationships between native people and the new arrivals. The book’s organizing principle, one life per chapter, is dispensed with toward the end for a chapter on a love story and one on a variety of social rebels, and a somewhat simplistic conclusion lauds the colonists’ devoutness and courage. Readers looking for an introduction to the Pilgrims will be adequately served; others may come away unsatisfied. Illus. Agent: Robert Dudley, Robert Dudley Agency.

June 1, 2019
A prolific British historian explores the makeup of the motley crew--both "Saints" (Puritan separatists) and "Strangers" (economic migrants)--who ventured by sea to a foreign American land four centuries ago. Whittock (When God Was King: Rebels & Radicals of the Civil War & Mayflower Generation, 2018, etc.), an engaging writer who uses (sometimes overly) exclamatory prose, discusses the lives of 14 of these extraordinary characters, out of the original 130 Mayflower travelers, each in their own chapter. Throughout, the author emphasizes the stunning hardship of that first voyage as many of the English separatists, then living in the Netherlands, left everything behind to plunge into the unknown. Moreover, the crew was originally headed to Virginia on a different ship whose chronic leaking forced them to delay for months before setting out in the Mayflower, and then they were driven by severe storms back up the Atlantic coast to present-day Plymouth in November 1620. Fully half of the total died within a year in America, unable to survive the cold and meager provisions of the first winter. Whittock examines each of his chosen's backstory and upbringing in England, such as the Puritan leader William Bradford, radicalized as a teenager and one of the community in Leiden, who, with his wife, left their small son to sail to America--tragically, as his wife died shortly after arrival. The author's female stories prove especially poignant--e.g., Susanna White, the mother of the first child born in America; and Mary More, the orphaned, indentured 4-year-old servant and child of an adulterous father; she died shortly after arrival, probably from neglect. Whittock also includes a fantastic biography of so-called Squanto (Tisquantum), who had been kidnapped by Englishmen earlier in his life, spoke English, and was returning to his native land, which was denuded of population due to the devastation of European-spread disease. Stories full of faith and struggle lose none of their mythological quality.

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July 1, 2019

As the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's landing at Cape Cod approaches, Whittock ("Brief History" series) provides the varied stories of 14 individuals from the Mayflower and the Plymouth, MA, settlement--men, women, and children, including saints (separatist puritans) and strangers (opportunity seekers). The author outlines what is known of their lives (mingled with doses of supposition), motivations, character, and the challenges they endured before, during, and after the perilous 1620 voyage, aiming to demonstrate that these determined adventurers were motivated and sustained by intense faith and supported by impressive courage despite their unknown futures. Their mere survival is astounding (though half perished). Whittock praises them for founding a relatively inclusive community (compared with more restrictive surrounding colonies), and for their ability to forge relatively harmonious, mutually supportive relationships with neighboring Protestant settlers and Native Americans. For Whittock, the stories of these complex, interconnected lives, their successes and shortcomings, for better or worse, have imparted fundamental and enduring influence on American culture and identity. VERDICT This accessible book, among several that have demythologized Mayflower history, will appeal to readers at all levels.--Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

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