Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of the “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (1682). Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637-1711), nee Mary White, was born in Somerset, England. Her family moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the United States, and she settled in Lancaster, Massachusetts, marrying in 1656. It was here that Native Americans attacked during King Philip’s War, and Mary and her three children were taken hostage. This text is a profound first-hand account written by Mary detailing the experiences and conditions of her capture, and chronicling how she endured the 11 weeks in the wilderness under her Native American captors. It was published six years after her release, and explores the themes of mortal fragility, survival, faith and will, and the complexities of human nature. It is acknowledged as a seminal work of American historical literature.

Mary Rowlandson, a Minister's wife in New England as it says underwent a cruel and inhumane treatment from the Indians that took her captive. This is a story of sorrow and pain, of faith and truth, of tears and reflections, and of grief and hopes. The Indians poured their wrath and anger against this helpless small community.As she tells us in her narrative, in the midst of it all, miraculously, one of these salvages struck her as a lost star or beam of light by offering her a Bible he had from the Medfield fight, where they committed sacking and looting. He took it from his basket and gave it to Mary and she interpreted it as a gift from her merciful God in the middle of this valley of darkness.

Rowlandson's famous account of her abduction by the Narragansett Indians in 1676 is accompanied by three other narratives of captivity among the Delawares, the Iroquois, and the Indians of the Allegheny.

Presenting an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to colonial America's best-known literary genre, Andrew Newman analyzes depictions of reading, writing, and recollecting texts in Indian captivity narratives. While histories of literacy and colonialism have emphasized the experiences of Native Americans, as students in missionary schools or as parties to treacherous treaties, captivity narratives reveal what literacy meant to colonists among Indians. Colonial captives treasured the written word in order to distinguish themselves from their Native captors and to affiliate with their distant cultural communities. Their narratives suggest that Indians recognized this value, sometimes with benevolence: repeatedly, they presented colonists with books. In this way and others, Scriptures, saintly lives, and even Shakespeare were introduced into diverse experiences of colonial captivity. What other scholars have understood more simply as textual parallels, Newman argues instead may reflect lived allegories, the identification of one's own unfolding story with the stories of others. In an authoritative, wide-ranging study that encompasses the foundational New England narratives, accounts of martyrdom and cultural conversion in New France and Mohawk country in the 1600s, and narratives set in Cherokee territory and the Great Lakes region during the late eighteenth century, Newman opens up old tales to fresh, thought-provoking interpretations.

As the first wave of pioneers travel westward to settle the American frontier, two women discover their inner strength when their lives are irrevocably changed by the hardship of the wild west in The Removes, a historical novel from New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Tatjana Soli. Spanning the years of the first great settlement of the West, The Removes tells the intertwining stories of fifteen-year-old Anne Cummins, frontierswoman Libbie Custer, and Libbie’s husband, the Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer. When Anne survives a surprise attack on her family’s homestead, she is thrust into a difficult life she never anticipated—living among the Cheyenne as both a captive and, eventually, a member of the tribe. Libbie, too, is thrown into a brutal, unexpected life when she marries Custer. They move to the territories with the U.S. Army, where Libbie is challenged daily and her worldview expanded: the pampered daughter of a small-town judge, she transforms into a daring camp follower. But when what Anne and Libbie have come to know—self-reliance, freedom, danger—is suddenly altered through tragedy and loss, they realize how indelibly shaped they are by life on the treacherous, extraordinary American plains. With taut, suspenseful writing, Tatjana Soli tells the exhilarating stories of Libbie and Anne, who have grown like weeds into women unwilling to be restrained by the strictures governing nineteenth-century society. The Removes is a powerful, transporting novel about the addictive intensity and freedom of the American frontier.

The powerful and uplifting story of one Ugandan woman who has given hope to hundreds of female victims of war and violence 'Beyond inspiring . . . This story of the redeeming power of educating girls and the restoration of traumatised lives is beautiful. The impact will be immeasurable.' Tim Costello AO Alice Achan was just thirteen when the Lord's Resistance Army first terrorised her village in northern Uganda in 1987. She spent five years on the run from the brutal LRA, and then cared for her young nieces after their mother died of AIDs, losing them one by one to the disease. Their deaths plunged her into depression, which only began to lift after she took in an unexpected guest: a pregnant teenage girl, kidnapped and assaulted by the LRA, who had escaped captivity with her toddler. Spurred on by her young friend's plight, Alice began to house and nurture survivors of the sexual violence that was a trademark of the LRA's twenty-year campaign. Out of this rose the Pader Girls Academy, which Alice saw as a 'School of Restoration'. It has helped hundreds of girls, many left with babies and HIV as a result of their enslavement. Alice recognised the humanity and potential in these girl mothers, who had been rejected or were trapped in their villages without hope. Written in Alice's powerful yet understated voice, The School of Restoration is a compelling story of hope, forgiveness, redemption and the human capacity to survive and even thrive against the backdrop of war and chaos.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

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 Devos has constructed a gripping narrative that opens a window into North America where English, French, and Native Americans faced one another across gilfs of culture and belief, and sometimes crossed over.