Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pilgrims

Before Longfellow gave them verse, Jane G. Austin gave them flesh and blood. This is the story of Myles Standish, the iron-willed captain who shepherded the Pilgrims through their first brutal winter in the New World, and of the quiet carpenter John Alden who won the heart of Priscilla Mullins in a way that still makes readers sigh four centuries later. Austin writes with the affectionate authority of someone who grew up on Plymouth Rock itself, populating her colonial settlement with women who wash clothes on the shore to stake their claim in a world that nearly killed them all, and men who must balance faith against survival. The prose carries the sturdy, plainspoken warmth of 19th-century American letters, leavened with humor and sharp observation. This is historical fiction that knows the difference between the myth and the humanity of the people who built a nation from wilderness and grief. For readers who want their history seasoned with romance, their romance grounded in history.