It's probably not very obvious by the books I've been reading of late, but I've had a long interest in Colonial America. Several years ago I bought Sally Gunning's The Widow's War, which I'm sorry to say remains unread on my bookshelf. I'll be remedying that very soon, however, after reading Gunning's latest novel, Bound, in practically one large gulp over the long weekend. Not too far into the book I discovered I couldn't, didn't want to put it down! Although I don't believe Bound is a sequel, several characters from The Widow's War feature in her newer novel as well.
Bound chronicles Alice Cole's rather harrowing journey from London with her family at the tender age of seven to the New World. Not only does her mother become ill and die, but her brothers succumb to the same fate as well. Alice's father is left with only his young daughter and medical expenses (such as they were on board a ship in 1756) he cannot pay. He's left with no other option than to sell his daughter into servitude for a period of eleven years. I tried to imagine my niece in Alice's position, (who is a couple of years older) having to leave her only relative and travel to an unknown destination in a foreign world, with a man who will put her to work as a servant in his house, but I simply can't do it. Imagine a small child who dreamed of living with her family in a big, new house in this new world, only to have hear dreams pulled out from under her. Would she even understand it? It's pure luck that Mr. Morton is an honest man. Alice becomes the companion of his daughter, Nabby, who's only a few years older than she and is treated as one of the family.
Alice's luck runs out, however, when Nabby marries Emery Verley. The few remaining years of Alice's indenture are given to Nabby and Verley as a wedding gift. Verley is not an honest man, and Alice is used and abused by him, even with the knowledge of Nabby. Feeling completely alone and with no knowledge of where her father may be after so many years, she runs away from the farm after being battered not only by Verley but by her former friend Nabby as well. She returns to Mr. Morton, once so much like family, but he turns her away. In the end she stows away on a ship and ends up in Satucket, Cape Cod. Here Alice's path crosses that of the widow Lyddie Berry (whose story is told in The Widows War), and she finds a refuge with the widow and a man called Eben Freeman who is a boarder in her home.
I'll let you imagine the state she must have been in, and the consequences of Verley's abuse. Although the story becomes quite heartwrenching, it's hard to turn away. I had to find out what happened to Alice. At times, I will admit, I was frustrated by her. She had a total lack of trust in the widow and Mr Freeman, but under the circumstances it would be hard to imagine her otherwise. This all created a certain urgency to Alice's story. She was developed very well and had a depth to her. She wasn't always easy to fix in my mind, but by the end of the story she had certainly grown and changed. I do feel like there is some aspect of the widow's and Eben's characters/relationship that I'm missing. I suspect things will be fleshed out more when I read Gunning's previous novel.
The story is all played out against pre-Revolutionary Boston and Satucket. While Alice is dealing with her own inner turmoils, the colonists are dealing with ever increasing taxations (and without any Parliamentary representation). Mr. Freeman must spend time in Boston due to his work, and each time he returns the men of the town gather round to hear the latest news. All along the seaboard there is talk of non-importation of tea and coffee as well as cottons, wools and linens. Eventually the women will drag out their spinning wheels and turn to homespun as the fabric of choice, and there will less China tea and more herbal tea (and not the nice sort of tea we know today). I especially loved the descriptions of how Colonial textiles were made. Alice helps the widow in the manufacture of homespun to try and pay back some of her kindnesses.
Although this was at times a sad tale, it was ultimately a satisfying story. I'm quite curious now to hear about the widow Berry's history, so will hopefully be reading The Widow's War soon and am wondering what Gunning will come up next to write about. Hopefully she'll continue on with more Colonial American tales. I think I also need to dig out my books by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (a noted historian on the period), especially Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, in which she discusses a variety of artifacts from the period and their makers and uses. It sounds fascinating (as do her other books).
I also want to mention the author's historical note at the end of the novel where she discusses indentured servants in America. Maybe I already knew this (somewhere in the back of my mind), but it's still a hard concept to grasp, but indentured servitude still occurs today. "...According to John Berger," Gunning writes, "CEO of The Emancipation Network, an organization whose mission is to end human trafficking by promoting economic self-sufficiency for survivors and at-risk groups, there are more people living today in indentured servitude, or debt bondage, than in any time in history, it being one of the most common forms of slavery worldwide, including in the United States. Currently, there are an estimated twenty-seven million people living in slavery." It's frightening to think that indentured servitude didn't die out at the end of the 18th century.