The Mayflower: The Households, the Voyage, and the Founding of America

From acclaimed historian and biographer Rebecca Fraser comes a vivid narrative historical past of the Mayflower and of the Winslow household, who traveled to America in quest of a brand new world.

“There’s nothing sleep-inducing in regards to the chronicle crafted by Ms. Fraser…There’s extra to the Pilgrims’ story―extra to American id and character―than our Thanksgiving rituals and reveries.” ―Wall Road Journal

The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is likely one of the seminal occasions in world historical past. However the poorly-equipped group of English Puritans who ventured throughout the Atlantic within the early autumn of 1620 had no sense they’d cross into legend. They’d eighty casks of butter and two canines however no cattle for milk, meat, or ploughing. They have been ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the brand new land that few of them may comprehend. However the Mayflower story didn’t finish with these Pilgrims’ arrival on the coast of New England or their first unsure years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of 1 odd household and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in America.

Edward Winslow, an apprentice printer, fled England after which Holland for a lifetime of spiritual freedom and alternative. Regardless of the extreme bodily trials of settlement, he discovered America unique, engaging, and endlessly fascinating. He constructed a house and a household, and his outstanding friendship with King Massassoit, Chief of the Wampanoags, is a part of the legend of Thanksgiving. But, fifty years later, Edward’s son Josiah was commanding the New England militias in opposition to Massassoit’s son in King Philip’s Warfare.

The Mayflower is an intensely human portrait of the Winslow household written with the tempo of an epic. Rebecca Fraser particulars home life within the seventeenth century, the histories of courageous and vocal Puritan ladies and the contradictions between generations as fathers and sons made the painful choices which decided their future in America.