Nonfiction Audiobook Review: The Pioneers

Title: The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

Author: David McCullough. Read by John Bedford Lloyd

Publication Info: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 10hrs 23 min.

Source: Library digital resources

 

Publisher’s Blurb:

As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River.

McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. “With clarity and incisiveness, [McCullough] details the experience of a brave and broad-minded band of people who crossed raging rivers, chopped down forests, plowed miles of land, suffered incalculable hardships, and braved a lonely frontier to forge a new American ideal” (The Providence Journal).

Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. “A tale of uplift” (The New York Times Book Review), this is a quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough’s signature narrative energy.

 

My Review:

To get the basics out of the way right off: this book is, as you would expect, well researched, well written, and well read. It is also an interesting look at a time and place I never thought much about--the first "westward expansion" following the Revolutionary War, into a part of the continent that I (west-coaster that I am) tend to think of as part of the East.

That said, the book's subtitle had me on guard from the start, on the watch for a kind of inherent racism that seems almost inevitable when writing about the "settlement" of places considered empty by Europeans, but which in fact are full of people. McCullough navigates that minefield reasonably well, though I think he could have been a little blunter about the ambiguity of the "American ideal." There is no doubt that the anti-slavery stance of the first settlers is laudable, along with the fierce determination and stamina with which they managed to get it written into law (as well as free public education, which is no small thing, though it's never clear to me if that education was extended to people of color). But.

 

While McCullough does delve into the ways that relations between the settlers and the Native Americans deteriorated--largely ruined by an idiot of a military man--he tends to gloss over the removal of the native inhabitants of the region to make room for that American ideal. While noting the irony that by the time the first settlers were dying of old age, the only thing left of the Indians was a fine collection of names for their former places, the author stops short of wondering how much that tarnished the nobility of the settlers. He mentions, but doesn't dwell on, the fact that the Indians were forcibly removed from their homelands. When we read of the slaughter of settlers and soldiers by Indians, the dead have names and histories. When the slaughter ran the other way, not much is said of the humanity of the dead.

My Recommendation:

The book is worth reading. The imbalance that I have pointed out is, I think, compensated by the glimpse into the changes that have rolled over this continent in the last 500 years. Still, I await the day when I don't have to go find a separate book to get the perspective of the non-whites in our history.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of The Pioneers from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

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Book Review: Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks

Title: Caleb's Crossing
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Publisher: Viking, 2011.  I listened to the Blackstone Audio version, narrated by Jennifer Ehle.

Summary (From Goodreads--I found this one too complex to neatly summarize.  I would have to say that the publisher did, too): 
The narrator of Caleb's Crossing is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's minister father tries to convert the Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the tribe's shaman, against whose magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later, Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. There, Bethia finds herself reluctantly indentured as a housekeeper and can closely observe Caleb's crossing of cultures.

Review: 
As is often the case with audio books, I was somewhat slow to warm to this.  I don't think that reflects on the books, as it happens almost every time (it's probably because the narration is perforce slower than reading, so it take longer to develop a sense of the book).  But this is a fascinating and complex story, and I was soon fully engaged with it.  For me, although the title suggests that the story is about the Wampanoag boy Caleb making the crossing between cultures, it was really about Bethia struggling with issues of faith and the ways faith was presented in her society.

That did set up a conflict for me, as I was continually put off by the restrictions of her society and of her religion, and wanted Bethia to rebel more completely.  Yet I think part of the brilliance of the story is that she does not act as we 21st-Century women want her to, but in keeping with her own time and self.  She can't quite make herself conform, but neither can she reject her God and run off to join the Wampanoag.

An additional narrative device that gave me pause, but in the end worked well (and I think might have been less confusing on paper than in the audio book) was the way in which the narrative is constructed as an account written out by Bethia at various stages of her life, so that her understanding of herself, Caleb, and their world changes through the story--that is, the narrator's understanding, not just that of the girl being narrated.  So the childhood parts are told from the view of the young teen, and later parts are narrated from greater and greater distances and more maturity.  I found myself set up time and again for the story to take a direction that it turned away from when the story was resumed often years later.

Caleb's Crossing is an impressive work of fiction which richly rewards the time spent immersing oneself in it.

Full Disclosure: I borrowed Caleb's Crossing  from my  library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."