The Heron
By Jean M. Roberts
By Jean M. Roberts
The past calls to those who dare to listen…
An invitation arrives; Abbey Coote, Professor of American Studies, has won an extended stay in an historic B&B, Pine Tree House. The timing is perfect. Abbey is recovering from an accident which left her abusive boyfriend dead and her with little memory of the event.
But her idyllic respite soon takes a terrifying turn. While exploring the house, Abbey comes face to face with Mary Foss, a woman dead for 350 years. Through a time/mind interface, Abbey experiences the horrors of Mary’s life, living at the edge of the civilized world in the 1690’s New England.
As Abbey faces her worst fears, she struggles to free them both from the past.
Publication Date: 15 April 2021
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Page Length: 252 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction/Time Slip
The History Behind The Heroin
The Heron is a blend of passion and creative energy, woven together to form a single work. I have always loved history. I admit to being enamored of English history and fascinated by all things medieval. As an American, I also appreciate and enjoy our unique history as a people and a country. There was a time when immigrants to New England were not quite American and not fully English, a very interesting period in our history!
A second passion of mine is genealogy. I can trace my ancestry back, in some cases, four or five hundred years. My ancestors all hail from the British Isles; I guess this is where my love of English history stems from. I am lucky to have ancestors who were in that miniscule group of brave adventurers who crossed the Atlantic in tiny boats with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630. This group of sturdy Puritans set up shop in a land devoid not only of creature comforts, but of anything recognizable; no towns, roads, and virgin unplowed land.
From its inception, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which from time-to-time controlled New Hampshire was a virtual theocracy. It did not become a Royal Colony until 1691. The Puritan elite who ruled Massachusetts quickly dropped their Anglican pretensions and set up a system of congregation churches. A staunch, rigid religion which controlled society, it believed most people were damned to hell and espoused an angry righteous God. Each church chose and hired their own minister. Attendance was mandatory and abstainers were fined. Services held in unheated wooden buildings could last for hours. The fiery ministers exhorting his flock to fear his maker.
Women, children, servants and slaves were under the household government of their father/husband/master. The population was litigious; the quarterly courts were filled with cases of slander and trespass. Neighbors were quick to turn on each other, and report each other’s misdeeds. Women who did not conform, who strayed too far from accepted norms, might find themselves accused of witchcraft. Physical punishment was not only tolerated but encouraged. Men who did not chastise their wives were seen as weak. Abuse was frequent; a part of daily life.
Violence came from without as well. As much as we would like to believe that the land of the ‘new world’ was there for the taking, the Native Americans resisted the takeover of what was their home. The result was frequent attacks and several full-scale wars between the colonists and the native population. Juxtaposed to this frightening, conformist world were the glittering courts of Europe. Hard as it is to believe, but actions taken by European governments, thousands of miles and an ocean away played havoc on the struggling colonies. From 1688 to 1697 King William’s War, the first of four French and Indian Wars raged across New England, sparked by the continental War of the Grand Alliance. Waves of French soldiers and their native allies, swept out of Canada to attack the fledgling towns, defended only by their local militias.
The colonists of New Hampshire built garrison houses, thick-walled buildings, surrounded by stockade walls to provide shelter during times of upheaval. I have found many ancestors who were killed in these attacks, many scalped before they died. Others were taken as captives to Canada, some never seen again. For years at a stretch, they lived in daily fear of attack.
The psychic scars left by living under such conditions must have been almost unbearable. One of the main accusers during the Salem Witch Trials, Mercy Lewis, survived the attack on Casco Bay, Maine, in which her entire family was killed. It is believed that the event affected her deeply. This is the world of The Heron.
I often wonder if my early American ancestors and I would have liked or respected each other, and I fear the answer is probably not. I do hope that there was someone, a woman perhaps, like my character Mary, who yearned for a bit of freedom, who chafed at the yoke imposed on her by her sex. She and I would have gotten along. In The Heron, I tried to accurately portray life in New England, its hardships, but also the good things, friendship, parental love for their children, and communal support for each other.
Jean M. Roberts
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A really interesting post, and the book sounds amazing.
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