Caleb's Crossing

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by Geraldine Brooks


  This book grew out of the remarkable environmental and cultural stewardship of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah. It was in materials prepared by the tribe that I first learned of Caleb, and the many inspiring programs offered to the public by the Aquinnah Cultural Center have helped to inform and shape my thinking. Individual tribal members have been encouraging and generous in sharing information and insights and in reading early drafts. Others have been frank in expressing reservations about an undertaking that fictionalizes the life of a beloved figure and sets down an imagined version of that life that may be misinterpreted as factual. This afterword attempts to address those reservations somewhat by distinguishing scant fact from rampant invention.

  For the early colonial history of Martha’s Vineyard I am indebted to the late Anne Coleman Allen, whose Short Course on the History of Martha’s Vineyard was indispensable for the depth of its research on the Mayhew regime and for its inclusion of insights by June Manning, genealogist of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah. Jannette Vanderhoop’s class on Wampanoag culture at Adult and Community Education of Martha’s Vineyard was similarly enlightening. I also relied upon David J. Silverman’s 2005 book, Faith and Boundaries (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press). I am thankful to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum for access to its archives; to Chris Henning for his Latin expertise; to early readers, including Graham Thorburn, Clare Reihill, Darleen Bungey and Elinor, Tony and Nathaniel Horwitz. As ever, I am fortunate in my agent, Kris Dahl, and my editors, Molly Stern and Paul Slovak. The students and faculty involved in the Harvard Yard Indian College archaeological dig and the Peabody Museum’s remarkable “Digging Veritas” exhibition welcomed me into the material culture of seventeenth-century Harvard.

  The fictional exchanges between Bethia and Caleb regarding matters of faith rely heavily upon John Cotton, Jr.’s account of his conversations with native islanders in his 1660s missionary journals, and upon marginalia in religious texts and bibles, written in the Wôpanâak language in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  While the Mayfields in my novel borrow a few biographical facts from the lives of the missionary Mayhews, my characters are all works of fiction, especially Bethia, who is entirely invented. Makepeace Mayfield resembles Matthew Mayhew only in one respect: his failure to matriculate from Elijah Corlett’s school. That there may have been tension between Matthew and Caleb was suggested to me by the arresting fact that when Matthew’s son, Experience, penned a detailed history of the Christian Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, Caleb—certainly among the most illustrious—was not mentioned.

  Colonial archives contain no surviving female diaries before seventeen hundred and very few letters. To find Bethia’s voice I have relied on such sources as the captivity narratives of Mary Rowlandson, the court testimony of Anne Hutchinson, and the poems of Anne Bradstreet. Her job in the buttery of Harvard College was suggested to me by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s introductory essay in Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). I have been informed by the work of several scholars of the period, especially Jill Lepore, Arthur Railton, James Axtell, Jane Kamensky, Lisa Brooks, and Mary Beth Norton. I began research for the novel while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, for which opportunity I remain most appreciative.

  In recent years, two Vineyard Wôpanâak, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop and Tobias Vanderhoop, successfully completed graduate degrees at Harvard.

  I think Bethia Mayfield would be pleased that a woman president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, now presides at commencement. Among those to whom she will award a BA in 2011 is expected to be Tiffany Smalley, the first Martha’s Vineyard Wôpanâak since Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk to complete an undergraduate degree at Harvard College.

  Vineyard Haven, November 1, 2010

  About the Author

  Geraldine Brooks was born and raised in Sydney. As a foreign correspondent she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans before turning to fiction. Her novels Year of Wonders and People of the Book were international bestsellers, and her second novel, March, won the Pulitzer Prize. She currently lives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard with her husband and two sons.

  Other Books by Geraldine Brooks

  FICTION

  People of the Book

  March

  Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

  NONFICTION

  Foreign Correspondence:

  A Pen Pal’s Journey from Down Under to All Over

  Nine Parts of Desire:

  The Hidden World of Islamic Women

  Copyright

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in 2011 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First published in Australia in 2011

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © Geraldine Brooks 2011

  The right of Geraldine Brooks to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  25 Ryde Road, Pymble, Sydney, NSW 2073, Australia

  31 View Road, Glenfield, Auckland 0627, New Zealand

  A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB, United Kingdom

  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022, USA

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Brooks, Geraldine.

  Caleb’s crossing / Geraldine Brooks.

  ISBN: 978-0-0073-3353-0 (hbk.: C format)

  ISBN: 978-0-7322-8922-5 (pbk.: C format)

  ISBN: 978-0-7304-5238-6 (epub)

  A823.3

  Cover design by Jaya Miceli, adapted by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio

  Cover images: © William Waterway Marks; (man) © Donald Carter

  Map by Laura Hartman Maestro

  Letter from Caleb before Author’s Note by The Royal Society

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Map

  Anno 1660 Aetatis Suae 15 Great Harbor

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  Anno 1661 Aetatis Suae 17 Cambridge

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  Anno 1715 Aetatis Suae 70 Great Harbor

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other Books by Geraldine Brooks

  Copyright

 

 

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