Colonial–Indian relations were yet more fraught. Fuelled by suspicion and misunderstanding, intolerant attitudes like Godsgift Brown’s were all too commonplace. By the time of this novel, it is estimated that possibly ninety per cent of the pre-Columbian population of America had died of diseases against which they had no natural immunity. The diminished groups that survived were often harried from their lands and treated with contempt. At times, skirmishes and arguments descended into full-scale conflict: the Pequot War, from which stems the story of Sooleawa’s quest for vengeance, is an early, bloodstained example. Eleven years after the events of this book, the long and violent King Philip’s War was to be the defining conflict of the American seventeenth century, when the Nations united in a failed attempt to take back all they had lost, a struggle Sooleawa predicts before the fire of Hopewell’s cottage.
And yet others took a more compassionate view. Where I have used American Indian words, as in chapters one or twelve, I have consulted a captivating book of the period: Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America, a detailed phrase book embellished by the author’s descriptions of everyday living and manners; an author, besides, who urges harmony over war and who made great efforts to live peaceably alongside his neighbours. His religious platitudes aside, Williams’s book is a remarkable document full of observation and wonder. And for me, it is a beautiful notion indeed that I can have the same book on my writing desk as Mercia carried in her saddlebag when she braved the American wilderness three and a half centuries ago.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
Do you want to know about our other great reads,
download free extracts and enter competitions?
If so, visit our website www.allisonandbusby.com.
Sign up to our monthly newsletter (www.allisonandbusby.com/newsletter) for exclusive content
and offers, news of our brand new releases, upcoming events
with your favourite authors and much more.
And why not click to follow us on Facebook (AllisonandBusbyBooks)
and Twitter (@AllisonandBusby)?
We’d love to hear from you!
About the Author
Originally from the Midlands, DAVID HINGLEY worked in the civil service for eleven years before moving to New York with his husband, where he passed his days on Manhattan fulfilling his long-term ambition to write and penned his debut novel, Birthright. He returned to the UK in 2016. Puritan is his second novel.
davidhingley.com
@dhingley_author
By David Hingley
Birthright
Puritan
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
12 Fitzroy Mews
London W1T 6DW
allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2017.
This ebook edition first published in 2017.
Copyright © 2017 by DAVID HINGLEY
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7490-2033-0
Puritan Page 40