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Viking
May 2011
On Sale: May 3, 2011
Featuring: Bethia Mayfield; Caleb
320 pages
ISBN: 0670021040
EAN: 9780670021048
Hardcover
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Historical
A richly imagined new novel from the author of the New
York Times bestseller, People of the Book.
Once again, Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard
of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man
from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to
graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual
scaffold, Brooks has created a luminous tale of love and
faith, magic and adventure. The narrator of
Caleb's Crossing is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in
the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of
pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns
after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As
often as she can, she slips away to explore the island's
glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag
inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son
of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative secret
friendship that draws each into the alien world of the
other. Bethia's minister father tries to convert the
Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the tribe's shaman,
against whose magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his
projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later,
Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the
colonial elite. There, Bethia finds herself reluctantly
indentured as a housekeeper and can closely observe Caleb's
crossing of cultures. Like Brooks's beloved narrator
Anna in Year of Wonders, Bethia proves an emotionally
irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha's Vineyard and the
intimate spaces of the human heart. Evocative and utterly
absorbing, Caleb's Crossing further establishes
Brooks's place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.
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