Dimensions
162 x 240 x 35mm
"Rebecca Fraser's book about the Mayflower sheds new light on a family caught up in all the perils of crossing the ocean and settling in the wilderness. Edward Winslow, an apprentice printer born in Worcestershire, 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. But the story did not end with the Pilgrims' treacherous transatlantic journey or their first uncertain years on the Massachusetts coast. All settlers had to become linguists, traders and explorers, and yet not forget their roots and customs from the old country. With the aid of exciting contemporary documents Rebecca Fraser brings to life the adventures of an ordinary family, the Winslows, made less ordinary by their responses to the challenges of the New World. The very special relationship between Edward and Massassoit, chief of the Wampanoags, is commemorated in the first Thanksgiving. And yet fifty years later Edward's son Josiah was commanding the New England militias against Massassoit's son in King Philip's War. Written with the pace of an epic, this is a story both national and intimate. It traces the contradictions between generations, the lives of brave and vocal Puritan women and the tiny details of domestic life in the seventeenth century. This book is an intensely human portrait of the Winslow family as they made the painful decisions that ensured their survival in America."
