John Vytal: A Tale of the Lost Colony

The year is 1587. One hundred and seventeen English colonists arrive at Roanoke Island, off the coast of Virginia. Three years later, only a single word carved into a wooden post remains: CROATOAN. No one knows what happened. William Farquhar Payson transforms this oldest and most haunting of American mysteries into a tale of adventure, romance, and fate. Our hero, John Vytal, moves through a richly rendered world of Elizabethan England and the brutal early Virginia colonies, encountering the poet Christopher Marlowe, the soldier Hugh Rouse, and countless souls caught between empire and wilderness. The narrative begins amid the violence of a bear-baiting in London and follows Vytal toward the Virginia shore, where an inexplicable disappearance awaits. This is historical fiction that doesn't merely recount the lost colony but inhabits its mystery, asking what becomes of people when the world forgets them.