The Unredeemed Captive : A Family Story from Early America

Rating:
Summary: History is relative to those reivewing it - liberal view
Review: A fiction based on American history. The book is similar to James Michener's Poland in that it is only based on history. (Michener was better btw.) To accomplish this Demos' work is based on many, many creditable sources (monographies). John Demos' (Demetracopoulos unanglicized) fundamental Protestant Father and Mother's family that played a central role in the Salem, Massachusetts witchcraft trials were obvious influences for the book and background. In school he knew, "...FDR and other aristocratic liberals." (Adelson). The backgrounds and bias of Demos should not be used to discredit his work, as his was in school. A lot of work was done here. His thought - Any argment is better than no argment. You won't find this logic in most college books by dead professors, still revised and published in increasing editions by committies. You'll find that this is somewhat more towards graduate level reading at about chapter 4 and beyond, with in depth analysis of the story and its impact on the three cultures (French, English, and Native American Indian), as well as the mistreatment of women during this period. Location - Written about the area in-land from the Mass. Bay Colony. Here is the part that's a little abrasive. History is events remembered because someone thinks remembering those particular evens are critical. Most of history is about cold efficiency. Demos attempts to re-write history, saying it is really relative to people reviewing it. Today when multi-culutre means more checks, in a born again American mutli-cultural economy, his focus is the Indian as the victim (ethnohistory - new popular historical writing style). Marketing tells you, that all the victims will run out and buy the book. So here are some of the problems I saw with turning history into fiction. Unlike characters of that period, priests openly attack their Protestant Church with comments like `Uncharitable, dishonouring, stupid, presumptuous,' and females rebel...the relationship of Eunice the symbology, mended too late make it very radical. We don't remember the major events that contribute to founding a nation, but the cultural spikes that contribute to social change. It would sit on your shelf next to the Da Vinci Code (Hint: Even liberal Bart Ehrman broke that one down). Oh - I did like "The Wealth And Poverty of Nations" by David S. Landes, go ahead and ding me on that one.

Rating:
Summary: only for the patient reader does it deliver!
Review: except for an acceptable opening, the book dwindles into vaguely historical rhetoric. this part can be zipped past for most readers, please do! finally, demos hits his stride and provides real insight to the living conditions in new france and new england for native people and the euro-americans.

his writing style is not fixed and appears moving toward unknown borders. nonetheless, he earned my respect as author and historian when his innovative presentation includes closure to the williams family. most significantly, demos proves humanity is a common bond to the 'white' new england williams and the 'indian' kahnawake descendants. too bad most readers will find only sleep in the early pages, though.

Rating:
Summary: not an easy read
Review: I read this book for a class. I found that while the first five chapters are very interesting, the author spends much of the rest of the book babbling on and on about customs and hearsay. This book picked up again at the end, in the chapter marked "Endings." It is the story of a girl named Eunice who ends up living among the Mohawk indians and flat out refuses to go home. That's where chapter 5 ends, and the boring, history textbook portion of this book shows up. The author even goes so far as to go off course by telling the story of Kateri, a Mohawk woman who converts to Christianity and ends up doing some rather drastic things. I would not read this book for pleasure. It was hard enough to get through for a class, let alone for fun. Skip this book and find something else. I don't know what to recommend. Just not this book, which has no central plot or theme. Read something else. This book is mediocre, tops. It is truly not worthy of the National Book award that it recieved.

Rating:
Summary: What could be an interesting tale marred by an awful prose
Review: John Demos tackles an interesting topic in writing the Unredeemed Captive, a story about a young Puritan girl who is captured and subsquently adopted by Mohawk Indians and her family's attempts to redeem her. Such a tale would strike one as intruiging and rife with historical detail. Indeed, Demos' research is superb. Demos spares no quarter in bombarding the reader with references to historical primary sources, which range from Puritan sermons to fur trader diaries yet in Demos' obsessive need to illustrate his narrative with these documents he loses the reader with his unredeemable writing style. An unbearably excessive use of the parentheses and colon are among Demos' cardinal sins in this book often throwing the reader off on tangents and unnecessary observations which end up obscuring the tale rather than magnifying it. This chaotic style makes the book an incredible drag for the detatched reader. In addition, Demos takes analysis of sources to the next level, often inserting his own narrative on the thoughts of various characters in the book without any backup evidence for these assumptions.

There is no doubt Demos has done his homework on this book, unfortuneatly that's not enough to keep the reader interested. This book is valuable as a historical analysis of a segment often unlooked at in American history yet its historical ferver loses the reader along the way.

Rating:
Summary: Really Good
Review: Really helpful in understanding why so many colonists chose to stay with their captors, or adoptive Indian families.

Loved it.

Rating:
Summary: Bedtime Lullaby
Review: The descriptions certainly seemed interesting. What was heralded as a beautifully achieved balance between native, French, and English cultures in eastern North America in the early 18th century became little less than a spiraling disappointment of an academic work. The book is largely composed of excerpts from 18th century correspondences and official government documents which were clearly not edited for easy comprehension by the contemporary reader. Furthermore, some of these quoted writings even remained in their original vernacular (Dutch and French).

Although Demos' ability to report on what was seemingly a routine and trivial capture of a colonial settler by native tribes was admirable in its tireless detail, the central story itself is lacking in any real depth or interest. After reaing the book and rereadin parts of it over, I cannot understand what compelled Demos to write any sort of summary or commentary on such a generally disinteresting and disengaging subject. Half the book was composed of predictable diplomatic jabber between the governors of Massachusetts and New France, whose behaviours were both highly patterned and not even confrontational. We may as well have been reading reams of routine documents on an embassy file.

Not to mention, in his quest to report in a detailed fashion every word bounced between Boston and Quebec City in the matter of the captive that ives the work its title, Demos generally fails to describe in any detail the cultural interactions between the English, the natives, and the French, which seemed to be the intended essence.

Rating:
Summary: A family story from early America
Review: This book is an example of petite histoire, the account of particular households and villages, set in the larger context of early colonial New England. Demos tells the story of an Indian raid of 1704, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and its aftermath. In the raid, prominent minister John Williams, his family, and many others are taken captive and transported to Quebec, near Montreal. Some die in transit; many others are returned or "redeemed" to their homes. Williams' daughter, Eunice, remains "unredeemed", a convert to Catholicism and a new way of life, now married to a member of the capturing tribe. Demos does a marvelous job in reading and explicating the meager original sources which survive, and applying a judicious historical imagination to reconstruct this story, both in the larger context of time and place and the smaller context of the Williams family. As a resident of Northern New York, close to both Quebec and the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation, this story has significant local interest for me. Despite these attributes, however, I found the book often lost my interest, I think because Demos tries too hard to be writerly, with his narrative devices (ellipsis, enjambment, etc.) getting in the way of the story. For this reason, I must qualify my recommendation, at least for this general reader. I must say, however, that my wife, Carol, loved this book, stayed up late reading it, and enthused about it for weeks after a late night conclusion. Other critics also have been very enthusiastic.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding study of an early New England family
Review: This book tells the story of an Iindian raid on a small Massachusetts town in the later 1600s and how one 7 year old girl, the daughter of a respected minister, was captured and eventually chose to live as an Indian and a Catholic. It is not clear which conversion was more troubling to her Puritan family.

Demos uses the story to paint a pentrating picture of three cultures living close together, Puritan New England, French Canada and Native-Americans. The research is very thorough.

The only limitation is that the book is not a particularly easy read. In the introduction Demos says that the book is a return to his first love, narrative history. While the book starts out that way, with the thrilling tale of a French/Indian raid on a frontier village and the tale of how the captives dealt with the situation, before long you are reading about Indian kinship systems and the average age that males and females marry in different cultures. Fascinating information, but not much of a story. Still, if you are interested in the New England colonial culture in the 18th century, this is a very worthwhile book to read.