Caleb's Crossing

Short Review: I do not read a lot of historical fiction. But much of this was good. It is based on a snippet of reality about the first Native American graduate of Harvard in the 1660s. It is told through the eyes of a woman (starting as a young girl) writing in her Day Book (a journal). I found this particularly interesting because I had a class in grad school reading early Puritan journals, primarily women's. I thought this was a good, but not perfect recreation of a Puritan Day Book. I listened to it on audiobook. So some complaints in other reviews about the language probably slipped by me because I was listening not reading. The basic idea is that the woman in the book meets Caleb (a Native American boy just a bit older than she) as a young teen. They spend a lot of time together learning each others' language and culture. Later, after Caleb's parent die of small pox, he comes to live with her family and learns Greek, Hebrew and Latin from her father (a Pastor and missionary to Native Americans).

There is some tragedy and some romance. I think that the author handles the Puritan theology fairly well and does a good job of dealing with the every day life that is really the heart of many historical fiction novels.

The longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/calebs-crossing/

I had a hard time getting into this one at first, because it was so overtly religious. I know that Brooks is just being true to her 17th-century Puritan character, but it was off-putting at first, along with the ignorance of the time. Pretty soon, though, I was drawn into Bethia's world and had a hard time putting the book down thereafter.