Colonial Life

The story of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys is one of those delightful tales that American schoolchildren hear about in school, but it is also one that is much more interesting to listen to in older age. Unlike revered founding fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who came from Virginian plantations, Allen was a rough and tumble frontiersman, more likely to fight than talk. And yet, he was in no way a dullard, but instead as well-read as many of his contemporaries and more so than the average man of his day.

A typical book about an American founding father doesn’t start at a gay piano bar and end in a sewage ditch. But then, Tom Paine isn’t your typical founding father. A firebrand rebel and a radical on the run, Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. In death, his story turns truly bizarre. Shunned as an infidel by every church, he had to be interred in an open field on a New York farm. Ten years later, a former enemy converting to Paine’s cause dug up the bones and carried them back to Britain.

Based on True Events - Step back in time and embark on a captivating journey alongside Mary Brewster, a steadfast Christian woman whose unwavering faith and indomitable spirit shaped the destiny of a new world. In this gripping historical fiction, delve into the extraordinary life of Mary Brewster, wife of William Brewster of the famous Mayflower landing of pilgrims in search of religious freedom. As the Mayflower sets sail across uncharted waters, Mary finds herself not merely as a passenger, but as a pillar of strength for her family and fellow travelers. Amidst the harsh trials of the ...

In the frontier town of Springfield, in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons, the irascible brickmaker, and his troubled wife, Mary. It will be their downfall.

Through a granddaughter’s narrative, peek into the phenomenal triumphs that led to a “Gratitude Celebration”, a Thanksgiving tradition. The story centers on William Brewster, ancestor to many, father of the pilgrims and the nation, who perseveres through dividing issues of his era. Living in an oppressive state that deems him an outlaw, he must hide before indenturing himself to servitude. Knowing the suffering endured by the tiny fraction who lived to tell of the horrific sacrifices it took to survive in the New World, he shepherded his family onto the Mayflower.

In this, the third iteration of the author's memoir, he recounts how he came to live and raise a family on Beacon Hill. In historical asides he recounts the myriad events that shaped colonial Boston so that the city's path and his life would converge at a building on Phillips Street on the North Slope of Beacon Hill more than three centuries after the city's founding in 1630.

Anne Bradstreet was born into an unusual family that, in the early years of the 17th century, believed in educating daughters as well as sons. She then moved to the American wilderness as a young bride and proceeded to produce children and poetry at nearly equal speed in the years that followed. She was the first published poet from the North American colonies, beating out the men who would follow her by a number of years. Anne Bradstreet: The Life and Legacy of the Famous Puritan Poet in the American Colonies examines Bradstreet’s influential work.

John Smith is one of the most common names in the English language, but every Briton and American is familiar with the explorer and mercenary Captain John Smith, who helped found the first permanent British colony in the New World, at Jamestown, in 1607. He wrote several accounts of his exploration and his time spent in the New World, but in America, Smith is better known for his association with Pocahontas, a Native American princess. Smith credited her with saving him from being killed by the Native Americans. Retellings of the story fictitiously cast the two as lovers.