Geraldine Brooks
Hardcover | Pages: 306 pages Rating: 3.82 | 58221 Users | 6227 Reviews
Identify About Books Caleb's Crossing
| Title | : | Caleb's Crossing |
| Author | : | Geraldine Brooks |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 306 pages |
| Published | : | May 3rd 2011 by Viking (first published May 1st 2011) |
| Categories | : | Historical. Historical Fiction. Fiction. Audiobook. Book Club. Adult Fiction. Adult |
Chronicle During Books Caleb's Crossing
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. Watch a VideoList Books Toward Caleb's Crossing
| Original Title: | Caleb's Crossing |
| ISBN: | 0670021040 (ISBN13: 9780670021048) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Bethia Mayfield, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Makepeace Mayfield, Joel Iacoomis |
| Setting: | Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts,1660(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | Queensland Premier's |
| Literary Awards: | Nominee for Fiction (2011), Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Nominee for Literary Fiction (2012), Chautauqua Prize Nominee (2012), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction (2011), David J. Langum Sr. Prize Nominee for American Historical Fiction (Honorable Mention) (2011) One Book One San Diego (2013) |
Rating About Books Caleb's Crossing
Ratings: 3.82 From 58221 Users | 6227 ReviewsColumn About Books Caleb's Crossing
BETHIA'S CROSSING would be a title more indicative of the book's contents. Caleb is mostly a peripheral character. Feisty Puritan girl finds devious ways of gaining the knowledge she craves but is denied simply because she is a female. First I ever heard of someone getting a college education via eavesdropping.There is no doubt that Geraldine Brooks is a great author, but for some reason the characters in this one failed to engage me.
By rights this should have been called Bethias Crossing. Despite the blurb, it was not really about Caleb at all. I understand that he was a real person, and that very little is known about him. Certainly not enough to write a book about. So Brooks created Bethia on which to hang her novel of Caleb. Right from the gitgo Bethia did not seem a believable character to me. A little too smart, too perfect, too independent, too learned, for one in her situation in her time and religion. I suppose this
3.5★. . . they were clad in Adams livery, save that their fig leaf was a scrap of hide slung from a tie at their waists.. . . But it was his light temper and his easy laugh that drew me close to him, over time, until I forgot he was a half-naked, sassafras-scented heathen anointed with raccoon grease. He was, quite simply, my dearest friend.Bethia makes friends with a salvage (yes, with an L), as they are called throughout the book, and names him Caleb, while he calls her Storm Eyes. Geraldine
Rambling thoughts while listening to this book:Caleb should have stayed with his tribe.I cant stand these stiff, stuffy, uppity, judgmental, racist, bigoted, and misogynist Jesus Freaks. No one needs to be saved either. I wonder what Bill Maher will have to say tonight now that our president is in the line of fire.I could have read four Nancy Drew books in the time it took me to read this boring book.When this book is finished, I can read Music of the Swamp.Geraldine Brooks, while a beautiful
Sometimes my words falter, when I try to describe my love for the kind of historical fiction Geraldine Brooks bestows to her readers, for I truly consider them gifts. Maybe it's in the way her books completely inhabit a certain era and setting, even assuming the characters' language and dialect. Maybe it's in the way the inner mind is revealed in each abysmal narrative. Maybe it is because of the cultures, important historical timeframes and events rarely mentioned -- those that are brought to
This fourth novel by Brooks was quite successful to me at immersing the reader in a 17th century colony on the island of Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts and bringing to life important issues of the time from a personal perspective. It takes place in the golden period of peace with the Indians between the first colony in Plymouth in 1620 and the onset of King Philips War in 1675, which was covered so well in Philbricks popular history Mayflower. In this period, cooperation worked relatively
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