320 pages
What a superbly written book! The fact that it was immensely readable and interesting to me as well made this one of the highlights of my recent reads.
The story follows Bethia, a young girl growing up in the 1660’s on the island that is now known at Martha’s Vineyard. Bethia befriends a boy from the local Wampanoag tribe, a friendship that they must both keep secret, especially after the boy’s tribe is almost eliminated by sickness and the boy comes to live with her family so that he might be converted to Christianity and educated in the classics by Bethia’s minister father. The boy, Caleb, later moves to Cambridge and attends university, and we follow both Caleb and Bethia as she moves there as well, working as a servant and scullery maid and then facing the limited options available to women at that time.
This story is loosely based on the real Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. I loved the historically accurate details, the plotline, the beautiful prose - so, so good.
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