Caleb's Crossing

A long time ago, when I joined my first book group in Seattle, we read a book called Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks, a Jewish author writing about the lived experience of Muslim women in different parts of the world. It was an eye-opener. So my curiosity was piqued when friend Deanna Stefanelli loaned me her copy of Brook's new novel about the first Native American to have graduated from Harvard. Although based on the actual life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag Indian born around 1646 on what is now known as Martha' Vineyard, the main character of this fictionalized account is Bethia Mayhew, a girl born to a Puritan minister and raised on the Vineyard. While young, she roams the island and meets and then befriends Caleb--her name for him because she doesn't like his Indian name, which means "hated one." Bethia is a rebel at heart, constantly running up against the constraints of the time and her parents' beliefs about women's role. Although she knows it is "wrong" to be friends with a "salvage" --especially a boy who doesn't believe in her God--she eagerly teaches him everything she "overhears" in her father's tutoring of her older brother. When her mother dies in childbirth, Bethia is sure it is God's punishment of her and she renounces her friendship with Caleb and takes on the duties of mother to her infant sister and housekeeper to her father and brother. But her father has made it his mission to educate and convert the local Indians and brings Caleb to live with them in order to prepare him to go to school on the mainland. When her father dies suddenly in a storm at sea, Bethia is signed into indentured servitude at a prep school on the mainland in order to fund her brother's continuing education there. Caleb and his fellow Native American Joel are also sent there and so Bethia keeps an eye on their painful progress; both are academically gifted, but constantly challenged by people's prejudices.  Bethia is a compelling character and the sense of time and place are well conveyed by Brooks' eloquent account. Brook's story also confirmed some of my earlier learning about the different philosophies and world views of Native Americans in contrast to those of Europeans. This is historical fiction at its finest with an author's "Afterword" which recounts the factual information available about Caleb. I recently bought another book by Brooks that I am eager to start called People of the Book...