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The Unredeemed Captive

A Family Story from Early America

Author John Demos
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Paperback
$17.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Mar 28, 1995 | 336 Pages | 9780679759614
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Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize
Winner of the Ray Allen Billington Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

In 1704 a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, abducting an eminent Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams and most of his family would eventually be released, his daughter Eunice stayed with her captors, despite intense negotiations and pleas from her family. She eventually lost her ability to speak English, was converted to Catholicism by French Jesuits, and married a Mohawk at the age of 16, and continued to live in her Indian village until her death.

Demos uses this incident as a window unto the early history of North America, where French, English, and Indians faced one another across a gulf of culture and belief—and sometimes crossed over. The Unredeemed Captive is the story of the contest of cultures in Colonial America, revealing much about the Puritans, the French, and the Native Americans of that time, as it raises compelling issues about race, gender, and identity.

“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
  • 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

About

Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize
Winner of the Ray Allen Billington Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

In 1704 a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, abducting an eminent Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams and most of his family would eventually be released, his daughter Eunice stayed with her captors, despite intense negotiations and pleas from her family. She eventually lost her ability to speak English, was converted to Catholicism by French Jesuits, and married a Mohawk at the age of 16, and continued to live in her Indian village until her death.

Demos uses this incident as a window unto the early history of North America, where French, English, and Indians faced one another across a gulf of culture and belief—and sometimes crossed over. The Unredeemed Captive is the story of the contest of cultures in Colonial America, revealing much about the Puritans, the French, and the Native Americans of that time, as it raises compelling issues about race, gender, and identity.

“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

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

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
    John Demos
    9780679781127
    $17.95 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
  • The Heathen School
    The Heathen School
    A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic
    John Demos
    9780679781127
    $17.95 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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