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    The Unredeemed Captive

    A Family Story from Early America

    Author John Demos
    Ebook
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale May 04, 2011 | 336 Pages | 9780307790699
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    Nominated for the National Book Award and winner of the Francis Parkman Prize.

    The setting for this haunting and encyclopedically researched work of history is colonial Massachusetts, where English Puritans first endeavoured to "civilize" a "savage" native populace. There, in February 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

    Out of this incident, The Bancroft Prize-winning historian John Demos has constructed a gripping narrative that opens a window into North America where English, French, and Native Americans faced one another across gulfs of culture and belief, and sometimes crossed over.
    • WINNER | 1995
      Francis Parkman Prize
    • FINALIST | 1994
      National Book Awards
    • FINALIST | 1994
      National Book Critics Circle Awards
    John Demos is the Samuel Knight Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University. His previous books includeThe Unredeemed Captive, which won the Francis Parkman Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Entertaining Satan, which won the Bancroft Prize. He lives in Tyringham, MA. View titles by John Demos
    "Fascinating and alluring in the way the best writing on history can be."--The Observer

    "Powerful and useful. . . .Demos has achieved the kind of balancing act that historians constantly strive for but seldom achieve."--New Republic 

    "This thought-provoking study explores the multiple communities to which apparently simple people belonged and how their domestic lives were overtaken by political events. Fascinating, lively, and especially timely to an age struggling to understand the implications of its own cross-cultural encounters."--Kirkus

    "A masterpiece...recovering for us the poignant story of lives and families shattered and then painfully knitted together again in the complex cultural encounters between English, French, and Mohawk peoples in eighteenth-century America. There is nothing quite like it in our literature. It is a stunning achievement that should change forever the way we write and tell stories about the American past."--William Cronon

    About

    Nominated for the National Book Award and winner of the Francis Parkman Prize.

    The setting for this haunting and encyclopedically researched work of history is colonial Massachusetts, where English Puritans first endeavoured to "civilize" a "savage" native populace. There, in February 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

    Out of this incident, The Bancroft Prize-winning historian John Demos has constructed a gripping narrative that opens a window into North America where English, French, and Native Americans faced one another across gulfs of culture and belief, and sometimes crossed over.

    Awards

    • WINNER | 1995
      Francis Parkman Prize
    • FINALIST | 1994
      National Book Awards
    • FINALIST | 1994
      National Book Critics Circle Awards

    Author

    John Demos is the Samuel Knight Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University. His previous books includeThe Unredeemed Captive, which won the Francis Parkman Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Entertaining Satan, which won the Bancroft Prize. He lives in Tyringham, MA. View titles by John Demos

    Praise

    "Fascinating and alluring in the way the best writing on history can be."--The Observer

    "Powerful and useful. . . .Demos has achieved the kind of balancing act that historians constantly strive for but seldom achieve."--New Republic 

    "This thought-provoking study explores the multiple communities to which apparently simple people belonged and how their domestic lives were overtaken by political events. Fascinating, lively, and especially timely to an age struggling to understand the implications of its own cross-cultural encounters."--Kirkus

    "A masterpiece...recovering for us the poignant story of lives and families shattered and then painfully knitted together again in the complex cultural encounters between English, French, and Mohawk peoples in eighteenth-century America. There is nothing quite like it in our literature. It is a stunning achievement that should change forever the way we write and tell stories about the American past."--William Cronon

    Additional formats

    Other Books by this Author

    • The Heathen School
      The Heathen School
      A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic
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      9780679781127
      $23.00 US
      Paperback
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      Dec 02, 2014
    • The Enemy Within
      The Enemy Within
      A Short History of Witch-hunting
      John Demos
      9780143116332
      $24.00 US
      Paperback
      Penguin Books
      Sep 29, 2009
    • The Heathen School
      The Heathen School
      A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic
      John Demos
      9780679781127
      $23.00 US
      Paperback
      Vintage
      Dec 02, 2014
    • The Enemy Within
      The Enemy Within
      A Short History of Witch-hunting
      John Demos
      9780143116332
      $24.00 US
      Paperback
      Penguin Books
      Sep 29, 2009

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