The White; A Novel
New York, N.Y. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. First Edition [stated]. Hardcover. xi, [1], 219, [7] pages. Inscribed and dated by the author to Steve Roberts (husband of Cokie Roberts) on the title page. Inscription reads: To Steve with all best wishes. Thank you so much for making me feel comfortable. Deborah Larsen, September 5, 2002. Ms. Larsen is the winner of the 1987 Wallace Stegner Fellowship to Stanford University. Perviously she lived in Oxford, England where she was a prizewinner in the National Poetry Competition and read her poetry for BBC Radio 3. She also taught creative writing at Gettysburg College, PA. This novel is based on the true story of a woman named Mary Emission (or, as some think, Mary Samisen) who, in 1758, was actually taken by a Shawnee raiding party in south-central Pennsylvania, and forced from her home. In this reimagining of her life story, Mary gradually becomes integrated into her new Indian family and by her own choice does not return to white society. In 1758, when Mary Jemison is about sixteen, a Shawnee raiding party captures her Irish family near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Mary is the only one not killed and scalped. She is instead given to two Seneca sisters to replace their brother who was killed by whites. Emerging slowly from shock, Mary–now named Two-Falling-Voices–begins to make her home in Seneca culture and the wild landscape. She goes on to marry a Delaware, then a Seneca, and, though she contemplates it several times, never rejoins white society. Larsen alludes beautifully to the way Mary apprehends the brutality of both the white colonists and the native tribes; and how, open-eyed and independent, she thrives as a genuine American. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Fiction, Shawnee Indians, Indian Captivities, Seneca Indians, Mary Emission, Mary Samisen, Native Americans, Prisoners, Assimilation, Feminism, Two-Falling-Voices
ISBN: 0375413596
[Book #79145]
Price: $65.00