Virginia Bernhard
Auteur de A Durable Fire
A propos de l'auteur
Virginia Bernhard, Professor Emerita at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, is the author or editor of seven books, including Slaves and Slaveholders in Bermuda: 1616-1782. She lives in Houston.
Œuvres de Virginia Bernhard
The Smell of War: Three Americans in the Trenches of World War I (C. A. Brannen Series) (2017) 5 exemplaires
"A Response: The Forest and the Trees: Thomas Camfield and the History of Early Virginia," 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Sexe
- female
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 18
- Membres
- 127
- Popularité
- #158,248
- Évaluation
- 3.5
- Critiques
- 1
- ISBN
- 26
Some of the events were familiar to me (Bernhard tells us in her forward that she will stay true to known events, avoiding much of the romanticized history people may be familiar with) but some were new; e.g. the winter when Jamestown starved. There was so much death in the book--from killing, from disease, from starvation, from weather events--that I wondered why anyone would ever attempt to colonize the place. Of course, there were many deaths in Europe also.
Native American life was not romanticized either, and the leaders were portrayed as doing whatever it would take to survive. There was a certain level of naivete, or cultural differences which led to misunderstandings and mistrust. For example, why would leaders allow their children to board an English ship when there was fighting between the groups? Obviously they didn't believe anyone would take advantage of the children.
I did wonder at the low birth rate. In population studies I've done in the 1800's, families of a dozen children were common. Yet the women in Jamestown were not similarly producing a baby every year or so. Perhaps it was their poor nutritional status, or perhaps births weren't recorded unless the baby lived for a few years and thus the author didn't have documented births to include in her novel. She did end the book with many quotes from different writings which have survived to justify the events she wrote about.… (plus d'informations)