From acclaimed historian and biographer Rebecca Fraser comes a vivid
narrative history of the Mayflower and of the Winslow family, who
traveled to America in search of a new world.
"There is nothing sleep-inducing about the chronicle crafted by Ms.
Fraser...There is more to the Pilgrims' story--more to American identity
and character--than our Thanksgiving rituals and reveries." **--*Wall
Street Journal
The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is one
of the seminal events in world history. But the poorly-equipped group of
English Puritans who ventured across the Atlantic in the early autumn of
1620 had no sense they would pass into legend. They had eighty casks of
butter and two dogs but no cattle for milk, meat, or ploughing. They
were ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the new land that few of
them could comprehend. But the Mayflower story did not end with these
Pilgrims' arrival on the coast of New England or their first uncertain
years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of one ordinary
family and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in
America.
Edward Winslow, an apprentice printer, fled England and then Holland for
a life of religious freedom and opportunity. Despite the intense
physical trials of settlement, he found America exotic, enticing, and
endlessly interesting. He built a home and a family, and his remarkable
friendship with King Massassoit, Chief of the Wampanoags, is part of the
legend of Thanksgiving. Yet, fifty years later, Edward's son Josiah was
commanding the New England militias against Massassoit's son in King
Philip's War.
The Mayflower is an intensely human portrait of the Winslow family
written with the pace of an epic. Rebecca Fraser details domestic life
in the seventeenth century, the histories of brave and vocal Puritan
women and the contradictions between generations as fathers and sons
made the painful decisions which determined their future in America.
