The past two weeks I finished Mayflower (along with two Sports Illustrated issues). The history of the Mayflower colonists was fascinating but also disturbing. Those folks created some chaos by intruding upon the native inhabitants, but it was really the fact that they successfully planted a colony in Massachusetts that did the most damage to the indigenous way of life. Having proved it could be done, the Plymouth colony showed the way for many, many more English people to migrate to New England and eventually the whole continent. It was inevitable that they would clash with the Indians who gradually came to realize that the English were not going away, and that they were not going to be satisfied with a few acres of land. Nor were they willing to peacefully coexist with the people who had been there for thousands of years.
The war that resulted from the clash of cultures--King Phillip's War, as it was later termed--was more devastating to Americans, both native and English-born, than was the Civil War in the next century. Philbrick describes in great detail the battles and the combatants' futile efforts to make peace. Brutality was common on both sides of the conflict. There was nothing superior about the supposedly "civilized" people from England, except in numbers and material support, which is what ultimately decided the war in their favor.
Mayflower was a sobering look at the more complex picture of our English beginnings. At the end of the book, Philbrick takes some time to explain how we ended up with the more familiar, sentimental, patriotic version of the story--the one purged of King Phillip's War. (The revision had mostly to do with time passing and Lincoln's desire to find a war-time narrative that people could rally around). Mayflower was a very well-written, compelling book, though somewhat depressing, especially when considering what happened to the Indians. I recommend it highly.
Following that book, I decided to turn to a children's book that many people my mother's age read when they were little, The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was a delightful, supposedly true account of a year in the life of a young family on the edge of the wilderness. There was no plot beyond that and precious little went wrong for the Ingalls, so there was no suspense, only wonder at the many ingenious ways people came up with for getting by with very little. And it was a detailed picture of pioneer life in the 1870s. Though it has a nostalgic tone (it was written by Ingalls-Wilder 60 years after the events took place), the book actually gives a lot of information about how things were done back then and what life was like. Wilder makes it all seem very nice, though what really made her childhood wonderful, I think, was all the love and caring she was surrounded with every day.
I asked a few of my mother's fellow residents in the nursing home whether they remember reading this or other Little House books. Two of them said they did and that they liked them very much. My mother had not read them, so I encouraged her to read the one I'd just finished. I'm hoping she will.
Ever since I took a children's literature course in college, I'm been a firm believer in adults reading children's books, especially those universally recognized as great. This book was one of those and I'm glad I read it, even if I am old!
My next book will be the latest John Grisham legal thriller, The Litigators. So far I'm enjoying it.
See you next time.
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