Overview

When his father dies, and his older brother inherits the family's homestead in Stogumber, England, William becomes an easy target for recruiters of skilled workers for the newly chartered Massachusetts Bay Colony in America. A devout Puritan (and political outcast in 1640), of marriageable age but landless, he faces conscription for a looming civil war. The colonies promise land grants and a Godly Puritan community. Believing it's God's will, William leaps at the chance to be counted and belong. He bounds a ship for Boston, Massachusetts with his inheritance, a bit of cash, his father's loom, and two spinning wheels. Twenty-four years later, the year his tenth child is born, he must admit his mistake. Although he's reaped the bounty of God's providence tenfold, the political winds turn, the Indians become enemies, and his children leave the faith. What he'd fled in England has followed him to New England. William, The Patriarch by Nancy Shattuck is the first book of The Watertown Chronicles, fictional accounts of a real family that lived through the turbulent and devastating King Philip's Indian War in 1675-1676.

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9781640660946

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Reviews

I have a double reason for reading this book with such enjoyment--interest in the period and the narrative and the account of the life of my ancestor. The short chapters each dealing with one aspect of William's life made one really feel the arduous nature of the life of these early Americans and represents the best sort of historical fiction. Many congratulations on this first volume. --Mike Shaddock, Professor of Higher Education Studies, City College of London A fascinating recreation of life in early colonial America . . . steadily, carefully, expertly, Nancy moves us from the quotidian to the eternal, a steady march up to the final chapter of the book as if encouraging us to break down the fence between the mundane world and the eternal one. The book ends in a most amazing final chapter which I will not spoil by describing except to say it brought me near to tears . . . . timeless and very moving. --Excerpts of Book Review by Philip Shaddock, Shaddock/Shattuck Family Historian and Artist

Author Information

"Nancy Shattuck was inspired to write this series when she discovered her direct ancestors had lived through King Philip's War in 1675-76. Exploring their history, she was so impressed by the complexity of the colonial experience that each family member began to tell a different story. No longer a novel, the ""chronicles"" were born. Nancy earned a master's degree in Comparative and Japanese Literature at Washington University (WU) in St. Louis and completed the classwork for two separate doctorates, in Comparative Literature at WU and American Literature at Wayne State University. Previous publications include a children's fable, The Fishers, and a travel memoir, Travel Wings: An Adventure, in addition to short stories and poetry. She is the recipient of an American Academy of Poets award in 1978; Tompkins awards for poetry and fiction in 2004, 2005, and 2007; a John Clare award for poetry in 2005; a Judith Siegel Pearson's award for poetry in 2005; and a Heck-Rabbi award for drama in 2006."

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