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Book Review
Jan. 1st, 2018 02:29 pmCaleb's Crossing
by Geraldine Brooks
This thoughtful novel takes place in Martha's Vineyard and Cambridge, MA in the mid-1600s. It concerns the life of Caleb, a Wampanoag man who makes a crossing from his tribal ways to English ones, eventually graduating from Harvard. However, we see Caleb's story through the eyes of Bethia Mayfield, daughter of the minister who begins Caleb's education. She and Caleb enter into a clandestine friendship when they are young, and it is this relationship that leads Caleb to pursue English learning. Bethia, too, yearns for an education and the life of the mind, but Puritan beliefs about women and their place not only bar her from the pursuit of a formal education but also severely frown on any independent attempts to pursue advanced knowledge.
Ultimately, Caleb's Crossing is as much the story of Bethia's crossing from a life of repression and subservience to a more self-determined path as it is the tale of Caleb's crossing between cultures. Brooks very deftly explores the boundaries between and within both the English and Wampanoag cultures, and how both Caleb and Bethia cross them in their pursuit of knowledge and a wider life. She also casts an unflinching yet sympathetic eye on the tragedies and hardships that Caleb and Bethia must endure and the prices they must pay for their crossings. All of this is done with beautiful prose and great attention to the details of early colonial and native American life.
by Geraldine Brooks
This thoughtful novel takes place in Martha's Vineyard and Cambridge, MA in the mid-1600s. It concerns the life of Caleb, a Wampanoag man who makes a crossing from his tribal ways to English ones, eventually graduating from Harvard. However, we see Caleb's story through the eyes of Bethia Mayfield, daughter of the minister who begins Caleb's education. She and Caleb enter into a clandestine friendship when they are young, and it is this relationship that leads Caleb to pursue English learning. Bethia, too, yearns for an education and the life of the mind, but Puritan beliefs about women and their place not only bar her from the pursuit of a formal education but also severely frown on any independent attempts to pursue advanced knowledge.
Ultimately, Caleb's Crossing is as much the story of Bethia's crossing from a life of repression and subservience to a more self-determined path as it is the tale of Caleb's crossing between cultures. Brooks very deftly explores the boundaries between and within both the English and Wampanoag cultures, and how both Caleb and Bethia cross them in their pursuit of knowledge and a wider life. She also casts an unflinching yet sympathetic eye on the tragedies and hardships that Caleb and Bethia must endure and the prices they must pay for their crossings. All of this is done with beautiful prose and great attention to the details of early colonial and native American life.
